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 lead 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 across four areas: agrivoltaics and spectral beam-splitting; solar-powered and net-zero-energy greenhouses; controlled-environment and vertical farming; 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.

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)

Research Interests

• Agrivoltaics and spectral beam-splitting for open-field solar farming
• Solar-powered and net-zero-energy greenhouses (semitransparent organic photovoltaics)
• Controlled-environment agriculture, hydroponics, and vertical / microgreen farming
• Remote sensing and precision agriculture (UAV, GIS, crop sensors)
• Energy, water, and plant systems modeling, optimization, and AI

Teaching

• PLT 1120 / 1120L, Plant Science 1: introductory plant biology paired with a hands-on lab; students seed, grow, and measure crops in hydroponic and vertical-farm systems and take leaf gas-exchange readings at Spadra Farm.
• PLT 3020, Technology Innovations in Plant Science: precision agriculture, remote sensing, IoT, and AI; students build Raspberry Pi crop sensors, run GPS/GIS and LANDSAT/NDVI mapping, and complete a real project at the AgriScapes farm. (PolyX designated.)
• PLT 4210 / 4210L, Production Mycology: mushroom cultivation from fungal ID to fruiting, with IoT climate control and automation. (PolyX designated.)
• AG 5200, Statistics in Agriculture, Python Edition: a graduate statistics course built around the modern Python stack, from experimental design and regression to machine learning on real agricultural datasets.
• PLT 4020, Agricultural Drone Technology (new): FAA Part 107 remote-pilot preparation and turning multispectral and thermal drone imagery into agronomic decisions.

Selected Publications

1. Ravishankar, E., Vitoshkin, H., Kribus, A., Mittelman, G., Rozenstein, O., & Hernández, R. (2026). Benchmarking Spectrum-Splitting Agrivoltaics Using Spectrally Resolved Ray-Tracing and Crop Modeling for Yield–Microclimate–Energy Balance Across Arid and Humid Climates. Energy Conversion and Management: X, 31, 101987.
2. 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, 1299.
3. Ravishankar, E., Booth, R.E., 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.
4. Ravishankar, E., et al. (2022). Organic Solar-Powered Greenhouse Performance Optimization and Global Economic Opportunity. Energy & Environmental Science, 15(4), 1659–1671.
5. Ravishankar, E., Charles, M., Sederoff, H., Ade, H.W., & O'Connor, B.T. (2021). Balancing Crop Production and Energy Harvesting in Organic Solar-Powered Greenhouses. Cell Reports Physical Science, 2(3), 100381.
6. Charles, M., Edwards, B., Ravishankar, E., et al. (2023). Genomic Analysis Reveals Emergent Traits of Crops Grown Under Semitransparent Organic Solar Cells. Frontiers in Plant Science, 14, 361.
7. 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.
8. Mittelman, G., Atiya, V., Vitoshkin, H., Hernández, R., Ravishankar, E., & Kribus, A. (2025). Economic Potential of Open-Field Agrivoltaics with Planar Spectral Beam Splitting. Preprint.