McCormick Highlights our Data Driven Plant Science Course

This winter, Northwestern Engineering featured our new course, COMP_SCI 396/496: Data-Driven Plant Science, in a McCormick School of Engineering spotlight. Co-developed by Prof. Nivedita Arora and Dr. Susan Strickler of the Chicago Botanic Garden, in collaboration with Qitong Li (MS ’25) and peer mentor Raj Dave, the course bridges experimental biology with embedded sensing, bioinformatics, and machine learning. Students designed their own experiments, collected sensor data using a ~$30 Arduino-based toolkit, extracted and processed RNA, and applied computational methods to questions they cared about. At the course showcase, five student teams presented projects spanning biohybrid robotics, photosynthesis mode-switching in Coleus amboinicus, smart plant pots, climate-resilient coffee plants, and sound-induced stress response in tomatoes. As Prof. Arora put it: “In this age of AI, one of the most important skills which students need to learn is creative systems thinking across boundaries of disciplines — and that is what we aim to do.”

LinkedIn Post. McCormick News.