Debjani Sihi joined the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences AI cluster in the fall of 2024. She has joint appointment with the Department of Plant and Microbial Biology and the Department of Crop and Soil Sciences. Prior to joining NC State, she was a faculty member at Emory University. Her doctoral research was completed at the University of Florida, and she held postdoctoral appointments at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Sciences (Appalachian Laboratory) and Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

Her research program focuses on the plant-soil-microbe-atmosphere continuum. Sihi is a biogeochemist by training, and her work involves integrating field and laboratory data with machine learning (AI) and process-based (mechanistic) models. Her specialization lies in soil (and ecosystem) carbon (and nutrient) cycle processes and greenhouse gas emissions from managed (agricultural) and natural (forest, wetland, grassland) ecosystems. As part of the N.C. Plant Sciences Initiative, she is interested in building an interdisciplinary program that leverages cutting-edge technologies (e.g., sensors, imaging, molecular technologies) to address grand challenges of our era (climate change, food security, and environmental sustainability) using multi-scale modeling and big data analytics approaches. Research projects in Sihi Lab are funded by federal agencies (USDA, NSF, DOE) and industry (Valent Biosciences) partners.