Prof. J. Alex Thomasson

Alex Thomasson is Professor, Department Head, and Endowed Chair in Agricultural and Biological Engineering at Mississippi State University and Director of its Agricultural Autonomy Institute, where he focuses on autonomous agricultural machines. He is a registered professional engineer and former Professor and Endowed Chair at Texas A&M University, having served previously on the faculty at Mississippi State and as research engineer with USDA's Agricultural Research Service. Dr. Thomasson is currently an adjunct professor at Texas A&M University and University of Southern Queensland (Australia). He holds agricultural engineering degrees from University of Kentucky (Ph.D.), Louisiana State University (M.S.), and Texas Tech University (B.S.). His expertise includes precision agriculture, agricultural robotics, drones, remote sensing, spectroscopy, and optoelectronics. He has authored well over 100 refereed journal articles and patented an optoelectronic sensor for determining crop yield. Dr. Thomasson is a Fellow in ASABE (American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers) and iAABE (International Academy of Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering) and is a Senior Member of SPIE (The Society for Optics and Photonics). He is Past President of CAST (Council for Agricultural Science and Technology) and also served as Co-Chair of a work group in FCC’s Precision-Agriculture Connectivity Task Force.