Plant stress monitoring is vital for improving crop productivity and sustainability, but traditional methods focus on superficial traits like leaf color and plant height, missing underlying causes. Recent developments show that Raman spectroscopy enables optical and thereby non-invasive probing of biochemical constituents and stress markers. Nonetheless, current systems face trade-offs: precise but bulky, or compact but noisy. My project will focus on developing a scalable and farmer-friendly Raman instrument that is both lightweight and sensitive—by mounting a lightweight telescope on a robotic manipulator while keeping the heavy optical instruments at the base. After creating the device, we will test its performance in a range of real-world conditions and develop design improvements.

I am excited to combine my love for both engineering and physics to develop a device with real-world impact on energy and agriculture! After learning about optics/photonics at research talks and in classes like Quantum Mechanics (8.04) and Circuits (6.2000), I became interested in both the field’s theoretical frameworks and potential applications. Hence, through the SuperUROP, I hope to deepen my understanding of this research area and apply its core ideas, while also honing my collaboration and communication skills.