Dr. Eshwar Ravishankar

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I am an Assistant Professor of Plant Science, a CEMaST Faculty Scholar, and the Graduate Coordinator for Plant Science at Cal Poly Pomona, where I founded and direct the CIRCAS Lab: Crop Intelligence and Research for Climate-smart Agricultural Systems.

I came to plant science through engineering. During my Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering at NC State University, I developed semitransparent organic solar cells that allow a greenhouse to generate its own electricity while the crops beneath still receive the light they need to grow. That question, how do you divide one budget of sunlight between a harvest and a kilowatt-hour, became my research program, and it carried me through a postdoc in Horticultural Science at NC State and into my faculty role at Cal Poly Pomona.

My lab works at the intersection of energy and agriculture: agrivoltaics, from spectral beam-splitting to field trials under the solar array at Spadra Farm; solar-powered and net-zero-energy greenhouses; controlled-environment and vertical farming in our container farm and mushroom production room; and remote sensing and precision agriculture using drones, GIS, and crop sensors. We build real hardware, instrument it heavily, and wrap it in energy, water, and plant models that help growers make better decisions. Since 2023 this work has been supported by 23 competitive awards, including a $2.1 million California Energy Commission award to scale agrivoltaics across California.

True to Cal Poly Pomona's learn-by-doing mission, I bring this work into the classroom, putting sensors, live crops, and real data in students' hands. I welcome students from every background, engineering, biology, computer science, and agriculture, who want to build things that grow.

Awards & Honors

• Outstanding Faculty Advisor, Huntley College of Agriculture (2026)
• PolyX Signature Polytechnic Experience designation, PLT 3020 and PLT 4210 (2025–2026)
• PolyX Faculty Spotlight, PLT 4210 Production Mycology (2025)
• CEMaST Faculty Scholar, Cal Poly Pomona (2024–present)
• Highly Cited Paper (Web of Science), Cell Reports Physical Science (2021)
• Cover feature, Joule (2020)

Research Interests

• Agrivoltaics: spectral beam-splitting and field-validated co-optimization of solar generation, battery storage, and crop production
• Solar-powered and net-zero-energy greenhouses (semitransparent organic photovoltaics)
• Controlled-environment agriculture, hydroponics, mushroom production, and vertical farming
• Remote sensing and precision agriculture (UAV multispectral imaging, GIS, crop sensors)
• Crop and greenhouse simulation, decision-support tools, water recovery, and machine learning

Selected Funding

• California Energy Commission, EPIC: Scalable agrivoltaics in California: field-validated co-optimization of solar generation, battery dispatch, and crop production. $2.1M, PI (2026–)
• CSU Agricultural Research Institute: Field-validated agrivoltaic decision support for Southern California specialty-crop systems. $100K, PI (2026–2027)
• CSU Agricultural Research Institute: Low-cost unmanned aerial and ground vehicle platforms for precision farming. $122K, Co-PI (2024–2026)
• CANERS Foundation: IntelliGrow-AI, a decision-support tool to reduce water, energy, and labor costs in California nursery greenhouses. $20K, PI (2026–2027)
• CSU Agricultural Research Institute: Crop-coupled evaluation of semitransparent organic photovoltaics for energy-resilient California greenhouses. $10K, PI (2026–2027)

Teaching

• PLT 1120 / 1120L, Horticulture and Greenhouse Management: students take a crop from seed to harvest, work out the math of a hydroponic nutrient solution, and compare lighting, climate control, and energy use across the campus container farm and research greenhouse.
• PLT 3020, Technology Innovations in Plant Science: precision agriculture, remote sensing, IoT, and AI; students build Raspberry Pi crop sensors, run GPS/GIS and NDVI mapping, and complete a real project at the AgriScapes farm. (PolyX designated.)
• PLT 4210 / 4210L, Production Mycology: mushroom cultivation from substrate and aseptic culture to fruiting, with IoT climate control, in an indoor production room built for the course; first offered Spring 2026. (PolyX designated.)
• AG 5200, Research Design and Data Analysis for Agriculture: a graduate course redesigned in Python, pairing experimental-design theory with code-along labs on real agricultural data.
• PLT 4020, Agricultural Drone Technology (new, planned for Fall 2027): FAA Part 107 knowledge, safe UAV operation, and precision-agriculture imagery, with assessed use of generative AI.
• PLT 4600, Geospatial Analysis of Soils, Plants, and People (new, co-developed): a GIS course now in curriculum review.

Selected Publications

• Ravishankar, E., Vitoshkin, H., Kribus, A., Mittelman, G., Rozenstein, O., & Hernández, R. (2026). Benchmarking spectrum-splitting agrivoltaics using spectrally resolved ray-tracing and crop-modelling for yield–microclimate–energy balance across arid and humid climates. Energy Conversion and Management: X, 31, 101987.
• Field, R., Abernathy, B., Ravishankar, E., Cassity-Duffey, K., & Vaughn, J. (2026). Agrivoltaics can add value to high tunnels in a subtropical environment. Agronomy, 16(13), 1299.
• Charles, M., Edwards, B., Ravishankar, E., et al. (2023). Emergent molecular traits of lettuce and tomato grown under wavelength-selective solar cells. Frontiers in Plant Science, 14, 1087707.
• Ravishankar, E., Booth, R. E., Hollingsworth, J. A., Ade, H. W., Sederoff, H., DeCarolis, J. F., & O'Connor, B. T. (2022). Organic solar-powered greenhouse performance optimization and global economic opportunity. Energy & Environmental Science, 15(4), 1659–1671.
• Ravishankar, E., Charles, M., Sederoff, H., Ade, H. W., O'Connor, B. T., et al. (2021). Balancing crop production and energy harvesting in organic solar-powered greenhouses. Cell Reports Physical Science, 2(3), 100381. (Highly Cited Paper)
• Ravishankar, E., Booth, R. E., Saravitz, C., Sederoff, H., Ade, H. W., & O'Connor, B. T. (2020). Achieving net zero energy greenhouses by integrating semitransparent organic solar cells. Joule, 4(2), 490–506. (Cover feature)
• Hollingsworth, J. A., Ravishankar, E., O'Connor, B. T., Johnson, J. X., & DeCarolis, J. F. (2020). Environmental and economic impacts of solar-powered integrated greenhouses. Journal of Industrial Ecology, 24(1), 234–247.
• Mittelman, G., Atiya, V., Vitoshkin, H., Hernández, R., Ravishankar, E., & Kribus, A. (2025). The economic potential of open field agrivoltaics with planar spectral beam splitting. SSRN preprint 5126392.