Inaugural ASU–Science Prize Recognizes Research that Serves Farmers from the Ground Up
Release author: Meagan Phelan
image:
Meha Jain doing fieldwork in India.
view moreCredit: Meha Jain
When Meha Jain talks about satellites, she often ends up talking about people.
Years before she became an associate professor at the University of Michigan’s School for Environment and Sustainability, Jain was standing in rural smallholder farming communities – systems projected to be extremely negatively impacted by climate change – trying to understand how environmental change is experienced on the ground. “The more time I spent in the field,” she says, “the more I realized that humans and the environment are completely linked.”
That realization crystallized during a formative year she spent in India in 2007–2008, shortly after graduating from college. Working in rural communities, she saw firsthand the complexity of the decisions that smallholder farmers face—decisions shaped not just by climate or soil, but by policy, infrastructure, and survival. “Spending that year in the field really developed my passion,” she says.
That passion has now earned Jain the inaugural ASU–Science Prize for Transformational Impact, established to recognize innovative work by an early-career researcher that not only advances knowledge; it also demonstrably serves society.
“At its best, research carries impact far beyond the laboratory to improve daily human life,” said ASU President Michael M. Crow. “Meha Jain’s work exemplifies that important reality, demonstrating how new knowledge can create much-needed solutions and lasting benefits for communities around the world. ASU is proud to partner with AAAS and Science to recognize scientific leadership and innovation.”
The prize was part of a partnership announced in 2025 between the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and Arizona State University (ASU), developed with input from AAAS’s flagship journal, Science.
“Our partnership with AAAS reflects a shared commitment to reimagine how research can connect to and impact the world,” said Sally C. Morton, executive vice president of ASU’s Knowledge Enterprise. “By supporting early-career researchers whose work is changing lives, the ASU-Science Prize helps to recognize and inspire the next generation of scientists to advance discovery for the benefit of all.”
Jain’s related research, including studies published in 2021 and 2023, uses satellite imagery and machine learning to reveal how smallholder farms, which are essential for food security for millions of people, adapt to climate stress—and how those adaptations can carry hidden costs. Ultimately, these insights inform tools that can be used to increase food production in an environmentally sustainable way, for smallholder farmers.
Scaling up what farmers already know
At first glance, Jain’s work appears highly technical: satellites, algorithms, vast datasets. But the questions behind it almost always originate far from a computer screen. “Most of my research questions are informed by what we or our collaborators see on the ground,” she says.
Jain and her lab routinely speak with farmers, whose management approaches vary widely, and local organizations to understand their most pressing challenges. Those conversations then guide what kinds of satellite datasets they develop and what patterns they look for at scale.
In her work in India, in particular, one recurring theme surprised her. In many places in the country, farmers told her they were increasingly relying on groundwater to cope with changing rainfall and rising temperatures—even though they knew it wasn’t sustainable. “What really struck me,” Jain says, “was that this wasn't a knowledge gap. Farmers understood the long-term consequences of using groundwater for irrigation. It was the circumstances they were in that left them with few alternatives.”
That insight reshaped her research. Rather than asking whether farmers were overusing groundwater, Jain wanted to know how widespread the practice really was, and where it posed the greatest risks.
Using satellite data, her team developed novel methods to detect irrigation practices across entire regions, to understand real-world farm management and its impacts on both crop production and the environment. The results were sobering. In some areas, groundwater depletion was far more severe than previously understood. In others, differences in aquifers or historical practices meant the situation was less dire.
This ability to see nuance at scale has become a defining feature of Jain’s work. Her research doesn’t just document environmental harm; it shows where interventions are likely to succeed, and where they may fall short. Ultimately, it aims to help identify the most effective ways to sustainably increase production at the landscape scale.
"We at Science and Arizona State University worked long and hard on how to articulate to potential applicants the unique characteristics of projects that we hoped to recognize with this new prize,” said Brad Wible, Senior Editor at Science. “That so many strong and creative applications were submitted, and that Dr. Jain's work stood out among them, is immensely rewarding, knowing that we are onto something important, and that we can play a role in elevating such vital work."
From observation to accountability
Jain’s commitment to serving society deepened through conversations not only with farmers, but with the organizations trying to support them. Many of these groups work intensively with hundreds to thousands of farmers, promoting more sustainable practices such as zero tillage or direct-seeded rice. But they often struggle to measure their impact beyond where the interventions took place. “Even if they collect data from targeted communities,” Jain explains, “they may not know what’s happening to the environment at the landscape level.”
Satellite data offered a solution. Working with partners and globally-available satellite data products, Jain helped develop maps that show where sustainable practices are actually being adopted—and how those changes affect yields and environmental outcomes over time. By overlaying these maps with information about where interventions took place, organizations can better understand whether their efforts are making a difference, and under what conditions.
Another beauty of satellite data, Jain explained, is that you can look beyond a single dataset or a single group of farmers. It allows researchers and practitioners alike to ask a wider range of questions about impact—and to answer them with evidence.
That evidence can be uncomfortable. Jain’s work has revealed tradeoffs that complicate easy narratives about climate adaptation. In some cases, practices that help farmers cope with short-term climate stress accelerate long-term groundwater loss. Scaling up local observations, she says, has made the magnitude of these risks impossible to ignore. But by showing the full picture, “we can start to think more proactively about sustainable management strategies for the future,” she said.
Precision for people, not just plots
A central insight of Jain’s research is that agriculture is profoundly heterogeneous—even within a single village. One farmer with the exact same soil conditions may plant a crop weeks earlier than a neighboring farmer. Satellite technology, which has rapidly improved in resolution and frequency, now makes it possible to map such fine-scale differences with unprecedented precision. For solutions for farmers to work, they have to reflect these differences, Jain says.
Jain’s vision is one of precision insight for individual farms. Data should help identify not just what works, but where it works best.
In recent years, that vision has begun to move from analysis toward direct support. Jain and her collaborators are developing a smartphone app designed to deliver satellite-derived insights back to farmers and organizations in usable ways.
When she began her career, she saw satellites primarily as tools for observation. Over time, as sensors improved and partnerships deepened, her sense of obligation evolved. “I became more excited about creating data products that could actually be used,” she says.
Defining success
For Jain, real-world impact is the ultimate measure of success. “Having that real-world interaction is incredibly motivating,” she says. Looking ahead five or ten years, she hopes to be working with partners across many more countries, seeing tangible increases in the adoption of sustainable practices, higher yields, and reduced water use. She also envisions global maps that can guide policymakers and practitioners toward interventions most likely to succeed.
The ASU–Science Prize, she hopes, sends a signal to other scientists—especially those early in their careers—that rigorous science and societal impact are not competing goals. “Follow what motivates you,” she advises. “Don’t worry so much about what you think will be a high-impact paper. Work on the problems that make you want to show up every day.”
She also points to a quieter lesson from her own experience: the willingness of governments, NGOs, and companies to collaborate with academics when the goal is real-world impact. That openness, she says, has been both surprising and deeply encouraging.
Runner-up
Mayank Kejriwal, research associate professor of industrial and systems engineering at the University of Southern California’s Viterbi School of Engineering, is the runner-up for his work to develop an innovative search system that transforms fragmented web data into actionable insights for disrupting sex trafficking. This system, called Domain-specific Insight Graphs (DIG), scales actions that investigators tend to do in real life: searching across the web, painstakingly piecing clues together, and following leads. DIG's methods incorporate frontier artificial intelligence research and were designed to compress processes typically requiring months into days, or even hours.
Journal
Science
Article Title
Satellite data can help transform food systems
Article Publication Date
5-Feb-2026
