James Chen

Assistant Professor, Animal Data Sciences

School of Animal Sciences
2080 Litton-Reaves Hall
175 West Campus Drive
Blacksburg, VA 24061

niche@vt.edu

I am an assistant professor of animal data sciences in the School of Animal Sciences (SAS) at Virginia Tech. My research interests include deep learning, statistical genetics, and software development. I am particularly interested in developing data-driven stategies for solving real-world problems in precision livestock farming. My research also tightly integrates with indutrial applications. Currently, I am developing computer vision algorithms to model animal behaviors for better animal welfare and management.

Education

Ph.D., Crop Science, 2021, Washington State University

B.S., Agronomy, 2014, National Taiwan University

Research

Dr. Chen’s research focuses on leveraging data sciences and technology to support precision livestock farming and animal breeding. His research can be further defined in three areas: (1) Phenomics: Developing computational framework to extract information from video and sensor data, (2) Genomics: Integrating phenomics-derived traits into genomics selection for better farming efficiency, and (3) Software: The research results will be delivered through open-source software and friendly interfaces.