News
Publications, talks, awards, and other lab happenings.
Bin Peng receives Conservation Research Award
The Soil and Water Conservation Society recognized Dr. Peng with its Conservation Research Award for contributions to soil, water, and nutrient conservation research.
ASC hosts the Frontiers of Agricultural Nitrogen Symposium
Dr. Peng joined a panel on agricultural nitrogen measurement at the Beckman Institute symposium.
Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant features WACI Lab students Qianyu Zhao and Yuanxin Song
IISG's Grad Student Scholars series profiled Qianyu Zhao and Yuanxin Song for their work tracing and targeting nutrient pollution in the Lake Michigan watershed.
Study examines the costs and benefits of agrivoltaics across the Midwest
WACI led a study on the agricultural and economic trade-offs of siting solar arrays on working farms.
AI meets hydrology: new system tracks nitrogen pollution across watersheds
WACI led the development of HydroGraphNet, a knowledge-guided AI model for daily streamflow and nitrogen predictions.
Untangling drivers of nitrogen loss in the Upper Mississippi River Basin
WACI led research separating human-driven from hydrological contributions to river nitrogen pollution.
ASC feature: how tile drainage transforms agroecosystems through soil oxygen
WACI led research into how tile drainage raises soil oxygen and crop yields.
ASC scientists unify disparate transpiration theories into one framework
Dr. Peng co-led a framework reconciling plant hydraulics, supply-demand balance, and empirical water-stress models.
Recruiting postdocs and graduate students for 2026
The WACI Lab is recruiting across five research areas spanning plant-soil-microbe modeling, watershed hydrology, and environmental data science.
New paper in Hydrology and Earth System Sciences on soil oxygen dynamics
WACI study shows how soil oxygen mediates the impact of tile drainage on coupled hydrological, biogeochemical, and crop systems.
Convening two sessions at AGU Fall Meeting 2025
Dr. Peng will chair sessions on water, agriculture, and conservation, and on agricultural decarbonization at this year's AGU Fall Meeting.
USDA grant funds cover crop root-trait collaboration with the Danforth Center
A $650,000 USDA NIFA grant supports a collaboration on cover crop root traits, soil health, and corn production.
Study finds stable within-field soil moisture variability, aiding satellite monitoring
Dr. Peng led a multi-institutional study on soil moisture variability patterns across growing seasons.
Dr. Peng joins the University of Illinois as faculty
Dr. Peng joined the Department of Crop Sciences as an Assistant Professor, part of ACES' largest new-faculty cohort in living memory.
Researchers propose a unified, scalable framework to measure agricultural greenhouse gas emissions
Dr. Peng co-led the design of a 'system of systems' framework combining sensing, satellite data, and AI to measure field-level greenhouse gas emissions.
New grant to reveal tillage effects on crop yield, farmland sustainability
Dr. Peng leads a USDA NIFA grant using satellite, airborne, and ground data to assess how tillage practices affect yield, emissions, and soil carbon.
New modeling solution advances carbon budget and credit quantification in agroecosystems
Dr. Peng co-developed a model-data fusion approach for quantifying carbon budgets and supporting carbon credits on U.S. farmland.
NCSA earns HPC Innovation Excellence Award for crop-forecasting work co-developed by Dr. Peng
The National Center for Supercomputing Applications was honored for the CLM-APSIM crop forecasting model, co-developed by Dr. Peng.
Study: multiscale crop modeling needed to assess climate change adaptation
Dr. Peng led a Nature Plants study calling for crop models that link gene-to-field and field-to-global scales to better assess climate adaptation.
New system predicts end-of-season corn yield more accurately than USDA
Dr. Peng led a study combining seasonal climate forecasts with satellite data to out-predict the USDA's corn yield estimates.
New model integrates crop and climate systems to forecast climate change effects on maize
Dr. Peng led development of the CLM-APSIM model, combining crop and climate system models to improve corn yield forecasts under climate change.