Preparing for a Future that Matters
At NC State University, doctoral student Sina Jamalzadegan conducts research to protect both agriculture and human lives.
For North Carolina State University Ph.D. candidate Sina Jamalzadegan, 2024 has been a big year. Not only has the engineering student made headway in using artificial intelligence (AI) to create biosensors to enhance medicine and agriculture, he’s been racking up awards for his academic prowess.
At the top of the awards list: a $34,000 North Carolina Plant Sciences Initiative Graduate Student Training Award through the SAPLINGS AI in Ag program.
SAPLINGS — short for System Approach to Promote Learning and Innovation for the Next Generations — is an NC A&T State University-led program aimed at increasing the number of underrepresented students in the fields of food, agriculture, natural resources and human sciences.
Growing with SAPLINGS
With the award, Jamalzadegan is working with Professor Qingshan Wei to integrate sensor technology, real-time images of plant leaves and molecular assays with machine learning algorithms and other aspects of artificial intelligence and data analytics to accurately detect plant diseases and minimize crop loss.
Through SAPLINGS, he’s also drawing on his knowledge and skills to help an undergraduate student, Sharath Rameshbabu, apply machine learning to tackle agricultural challenges.
Jamalzadegan has found his experience with Rameshbabu enriching.
“It has helped me refine my mentorship skills, especially in teaching complex topics like machine learning,” he says. “Throughout my Ph.D., I’ve mentored around six undergraduate students under Professor Wei’s supervision, and each project has helped me grow as a mentor.
“I gain insights into how students approach problems creatively, and being part of a program that promotes cross-training in ag-driven data sciences fits perfectly with my own research interests,” he adds.
Building academic and business skills
Such insight would prove invaluable should Jamalzadegan choose to pursue his interest in an academic career. So should recent awards from academic journals — the Digital Chemical Engineering Journal’s top 2024 reviewer award and the outstanding referee award for the March 2024 issue of Communications Materials — as well as the mentored teaching fellowship he received this spring from the College of Engineering.
But Jamalzadegan isn’t sure yet whether he’ll go into academia or industry, so he’s worked hard to prepare himself for a possible career in the private sector, building skills in pitching research ideas as well as gaining work experience.
This fall, he served as a machine learning intern with Pairwise, a North Carolina company transforming plants through genome editing. He also placed in the Bayer-sponsored two-minute research pitch contest and selected as one of the eight NC State mentees for the Bayer Crop Science University Mentoring Program.
When it comes to these awards, Jamalzadegan expresses gratitude. “The awards and achievements in 2024 would not have been possible without the support and guidance of my incredible Ph.D. advisor, Professor Wei, and the unwavering support of my colleagues and my students,” he says.
A chemical engineer by training
Jamalzadegan, who is from Iran, holds a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from Sharif University of Technology. In 2021, he earned a master’s in chemical engineering at the University of Houston, where he focused on potential cancer treatments.
After that, he moved to Raleigh to enter the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering’s doctoral program.
Though each degree has been in chemical engineering, Jamalzadegan has a diverse background, spanning biology, mathematics and computer science. He’s also committed to working across disciplines to achieve results that matter.
Better sensors mean better lives
In discussing his plant disease detection work, Jamalzadegan points to the fact that the world population is expected to reach 9.7 billion by 2050. “When the population increases, so does the demand for food, so if you could increase the productivity of crops, you have more food for more people, and that means healthier people.”
In all my projects, I always think about how people could use my research outcome, and health is an outcome that matters.
One way of increasing agricultural productivity is by reducing crop losses to diseases, he says. If farmers can detect disease earlier, they can take steps to curb the damage and achieve higher yields.
As he works on the plant disease sensors, Jamalzadegan continues to work on sensor research he began when he first came to NC State. In that project, he hopes to contribute to the development of potentially life-saving solutions that allow early detection of HIV through CRISPR-based tests.
“What ties these two projects together is human health. In both, we are trying to fabricate point-of-care assays that are portable and easy to use,” he says. “In all my projects, I always think about how people could use my research outcome, and health is an outcome that matters.”
