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A Brookings-based animal health company, Medgene, is leading a revolution in the development of veterinary vaccines that is turning the tide in the endless battle against animal disease.

While living in his hometown in Nigeria, Africa, John Akujobi recalls a tragic construction accident in which a bricklayer backing up a wheelbarrow didn’t realize his proximity to the edge of a four story scaffold and fell to his death. The incident stuck with him. As he progressed in his computer science studies and through conversations with his friends at South Dakota State University, Akujobi discovered the power of sensors, algorithms and machine learning. He realized those things hold the potential for preventing such future tragedies. His solution, a wearable safety system named AMBER – Affordable Multimodal Sensor-Based Environmental Risk Detector designed to alert workers in real-time of environmental hazards in their blind spots.

When it comes to grain harvesting, time is money and mess equals stress. Raven Industries (now CNH Industrial) developed a product to address those concerns, and Travis Burgers, a research engineer at CNH and an adjunct assistant professor in mechanical engineering at South Dakota State University, and CNH colleague Matt Horne developed a concept to test the effectiveness of the product before it even went on the market. As a result, Burgers and Horne won the 2025 Rain Bird Engineering Concept of the Year Award by the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers. It will be presented at the group’s annual international meeting in Toronto July 16.

Fred Boehm set out to become a medical doctor, certainly the pathway to a fulfilling career. However, well into his medical school education, Boehm discovered something else with an even greater potential to impact lives — biomedical research, or in Boehm’s case biostatistical research. Boehm, who is in his first year as a faculty member at South Dakota State University, said the message that changed the direction of his life was a sign at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. “Protecting Health, Saving Lives — Millions at a Time” is the school’s vision. That and the work demands of a new physician convinced Boehm to chart a new direction.

In new research from South Dakota State University, a novel framework for accelerating the speed at which reinforcement learning algorithms are trained has been developed by researchers in the Jerome J. Lohr College of Engineering.

Xufei Yang, a South Dakota State University assistant professor and Extension environmental quality engineer, is developing a novel method for assessing surface water quality through drone imagery and smells.

Moving trucks won’t be needed when the new head of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at South Dakota State University moves into the third-floor executive suite in Crothers Engineering Hall. Guanghui Hua will only have to move a few doors down the hallway when the environmental engineering professor becomes department head June 22. Hua was notified Feb. 7 by Sanjeev Kumar, dean of the Jerome J. Lohr College of Engineering, that his candidacy was successful.

Ideas expressed by a South Dakota State University sophomore for advancing sustainable practices within the concrete industry has earned him a $2,000 scholarship from an industry partner. Jakob Burckhard, a concrete industry management major from Brookings, was one of five essay winners selected by CarbonCure, a Canadian-based carbon solutions technology firm for concrete.

Sushant Mehan, assistant professor and South Dakota State University Extension water resource specialist, is conducting a research project that will utilize satellite imagery to assess water quality in eastern South Dakota.

Ice cores analyzed by South Dakota State University researchers revealed that five major volcanic eruptions occurred in the 13th century, helping trigger a multi-century cooling period known as the "Little Ice Age."