Mariya Kovaleva, PhD, assistant professor in the UNMC College of Nursing, participated in a March panel at the Agriculture and Rural Connectivity Retreat at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
With a focus on rural connectivity, the retreat included numerous stakeholders from engineering, business and public service sectors. Dr. Kovaleva represented UNMC and nursing.
The event included scientists and engineers from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, The Ohio State University, Southern Methodist University and academic, industry, government and community partners invested in high-speed rural wireless communication, connected rural emergency and health services, precision livestock management, and row crop agricultural robotics.
The group contributed to the development of a proposal to the National Science Foundation to establish the Agriculture and Rural Connectivity Engineering Research Center (ARC).
The ARC retreat is supported by a competitive planning grant from the NSF ERC program, enabling the coordinating academic institutions to actively engage expert stakeholders and thought leaders on the development of the ARC's engineering community, related rural and tribal workforce development and training, rural public-private partnerships, and an innovation ecosystem to transition academic research outputs to the marketplace and public benefit.