OVERALL RESEARCH PROGRAM
The number, degree, and duration of plant stressors are increasing under climate change. Plant environmental stress manifests as alterations to individual plant ecophysiology, and its effects can spread to larger spatial scales and affect entire ecosystems. The plant-disturbance interactions are spatio-temporally heterogeneous and are challenging to monitor over large spatial scales. Such challenges can be overcome using remote sensing data. Dao Lab explores how plant-disturbance interactions and plant chemical response at the species level impact plant health, growth, and functioning by integrating multi-source remote sensing, high-throughput plant phenotyping, geospatial science, genetic and molecular methods, biological modeling, and machine learning.

Areas of Interest
​Plant ecophysiology, plant-disturbance interactions, precision agriculture, invasive species, biodiversity, remote sensing, geomatic engineering, geospatial science, machine learning, data fusion, image processing, object-based image analysis

News and Updates

​04/2026: Our PhD student Trang Nguyen presents her recent study "LeafNet2.0: Multiregional Image-Text Dataset for Vision-Language Modeling of Plant Diseases" at the Harrington Faculty Fellows Symposium 2026 - Large Language Models: Advances and Applications, which was organized at UT Austin.
​​04/2026: Our research paper "Uncertainty Assessment in Deep Learning-based Plant Trait Retrievals from Hyperspectral data" has been published in Biogeosciences. This study introduces a distance-based uncertainty estimation method for quantifying prediction uncertainty in deep learning-based plant trait retrievals from hyperspectral data.

Link to the paper is HERE
03/2026: Dr. Phuong Dao returns to his alma mater, the University of Toronto, to deliver an invited planery keynote "Emerging trends in plant phenotyping with hyperspectral remote sensing and multimodal AI: Toward scalable and transferable models" at the FastPheno Summit Workshop.
03/2026: Our research paper, "Hybrid nature–infrastructure adaptation shapes multidecadal mangrove–shoreline dynamics in a tropical delta", which focuses on assessing coastal erosion and its relationship with mangrove ecosystems in southern Vietnam using remote sensing data has been published in Communications Earth and Environment, a Nature Portfolio journal.
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​Link to the paper is HERE
02/2026: Our research paper, "LeafNet: A Large-Scale Dataset and Comprehensive Benchmark for Foundational Vision-Language Understanding of Plant Diseases", which introduces a large-scale RGB image dataset and a comprehensive text benchmark to advance vision–language models for plant disease understanding, is now available on arXiv.
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​Link to the paper is HERE
02/2026: Our research paper "DiscoEPG: A Python package for characterization of insect electrical penetration graph (EPG) signals" on the development of the DiscoEPG Python package (with machine and deep learning algorithms) for characterizing plant-insect interactions and insect feeding behaviors was published in the Smart Agricultural Technology Journal. The project was conducted in collaboration with researchers from USA and France.
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​Link to the paper is HERE
​11/2025: The paper "All-in-one machine learning framework for early detection and characterization of sugar beet diseases using hyperspectral imaging​" led by our postdoc Alwaseela Hassan has been published in Smart Agricultural Technology.

​Link to the paper is HERE
​10/2025: The paper "deadtrees.earth — An open-access and interactive database for centimeter-scale aerial imagery to uncover global tree mortality dynamics" that Dr. Dao co-authors has been published in Remote Sensing of Environment.

​Link to the paper is HERE
​09/2025: The paper "GreenHyperSpectra: A multi-source hyperspectral dataset for global vegetation trait prediction" that Dr. Dao co-authors has been accepted at NeurIPS 2025 as a poster.

Preprint HERE
​08/2025: Dr. Dao is featured in The Crop Science Podcast Show​​ on our group's research that integrate cutting-edge remote sensing, AI, and geospatial science in precision agriculture. Link HERE
​08/2025: The paper "Does within-biome drought sensitivity reflect patterns across biomes?" that was led by Sydney Hedberg, a former Master student in Dao Lab has been published in the Oecologia journal.

Link to paper is HERE
​06/2025: We at Dao Lab are thrilled to announce the launch of a multi-year collaboration with the Syngenta Group, in partnership with Dr. Matthew Wallenstein and Dr. Jordon Wade. This initiative aims to develop scalable, transferable models for diagnosing crop stress—including drought stress, disease pressure, and nutrient deficiencies—by leveraging artificial intelligence, remote sensing technologies (hyperspectral and thermal), and advanced modeling techniques.
​04/2025: Our postdoc researcher Dr. Alwaseela Hassan presents his recent study "Integrating Ground-Based and UAV Hyperspectral Data for Disease Detection in Sugar Beets Using CNN-LSTM Models and Domain Adaptation" at the College of Agricultural Sciences Postdoc and Grad Showcase. In this study, we develop a modality-aware deep learning architecture combining CNN and LSTM for crop disease detection by incorporating hyperspectral data collected at leaf and canopy scales and from images from a HySpex drone system.
04/2025: Our undergraduate researcher Emma Hoopes presents her recent study "Characterize Herbicide Resistant Weeds in Wheat Production Systems with Drone Hyperspectral Imaging" at the CSU CURC symposium. In this study, drone images of wheat and weed trial fields were used to characterize herbicide resistance from spectral reflectance. This provides farmers with the ability to monitor large fields for resistant weeds. Drone monitoring can also be implemented in breeding programs to screen crops for resistance before it is visually apparent.​
​03/2025: We are pleased to share that our paper "Imaging spectroscopy reveals topographic variability effects on grassland functional traits and drought responses" led by Dr. Phuong Dao has been accepted for publication in the Spectral Biology Special Feature in the Ecology journal.
03/2025: We are happy to share that the paper "Unlocking Ecological Insights from Subseasonal Visible-to-Shortwave Infrared Imaging Spectroscopy: The SHIFT Campaign" that Dr. Phuong Dao co-authors has been published in the Ecosphere journal.
​03/2025: Dr. Dao gives an invited talk "Next-Generation Surveillance of Plant Pests and Pathogens: Multimodal Machine Learning and High-Throughput Plant Phenotyping" on integrating remote sensing, plant phenotyping, and multimodal AI for pest and pathogen management at the 2025 American Phytopathological Society (APS) Pacific Division Symposium.
​02/2025: Our lastest research "MOB-GCN: A Novel Multiscale Object-Based Graph Neural Network for Hyperspectral Image Classification" has been published in arXiv. This novel method addresses issues of the traditional pixel-based and single-scale object based approach by integrating features from multiple segmentation scales to improve classification results using a Multiresolution Graph Network (MGN) architecture that can model fine-grained and global spatial patterns. The project was conducted in collaboration with researchers from USA and Vietnam.
02/2025: Dr. Phuong Dao gave an invited talk titled "From Lab to Sky: Advancing Plant Sensing and Machine Learning for Climate-Smart Agriculture and Ecology" at the Earth Lab, ESIIL, CIRES at the University of Colorado Boulder, hosted by Dr. Cibele Hummel do Amaral. Nestled at the foot of the Rocky Mountains, CU Boulder is one of the most beautiful campuses we have had the pleasure of visiting.

Link to the talk: HERE
01/2025: Dao Lab first group photo of the semester. We are a diverse group of 1 postdoc, 4 PhDs, and 2 research assistants. We are building a supportive environment to make sure they all thrive and produce innovative and impactful research outcomes in the coming years.

Photo credit: Olivia Todd
12/2024: Dr. Phuong Dao is part of the representative delegate (led by Prof. Jeannine Cavender-Bares at Harvard University) of the NSF-ASCEND Biology Integration Institute to attend the NSF BII Grantee & RCN Meeting in Denver.
12/2024: Our postdoc Dr. Alwaseela Hassan presents the results from our recent project on multiscale disease detection with hyperspectral remote sensing and proximal sensing, in collaboration with researchers from USDA-ARS and NASA-JPL at the AGU2024 conference.
12/2024: Our research paper "Plant trait retrieval from hyperspectral data: Collective efforts in scientific data curation outperform simulated data derived from the PROSAIL model" in plant trait quantification using hyperspectral remote sensing and radiative transfer modelling was accepted for publication in the ISPRS Open Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing. The project was conducted in collaboration with researchers from USA, Canada, and Germany.
12/2024: Dao Lab at AGU2024 Conference. It is great to meet and have dinner with my postdoc supervisor and mentor Dr. Phil Townsend, Dr. Jeannine Cavender-Bares after a year and a half, my colleagues and collaborators Dr. Nimrod Carmon and Dr. Cibele Amaral any many others.
12/2024: AGU2024 Conference: Dr. Alan Knapp presents our research paper entitled "Do Patterns of Drought Sensitivity Within a Biome Reflect Patterns Across Biomes?" which was conducted by our co-supervised student Sydney Hedberg at Colorado State University.
10/2024: Dr. Phuong Dao joined the Editorial Board of the Agrosystems, Geosciences & Environment (AGE) journal (an official journal of the ASA, CSSA, and SSSA societies) as an Associate Editor.
10/2024: Dr. Phuong Dao shares our group's research on the use of remote sensing, high-throughput plant phenotyping, and AI in plant health research as a featured speaker, among other exemplary plant scientists James Schnable (University of Nebraska-Lincoln), Karansher Singh Sandhu (Bayer Crop Science), Thelma Madzima (Michigan State University), David Hessel (Corteva), and many others, at the CSU-Corteva Plant Adaptation Symposium.
10/2024: Our group's master student Sai Pennam presented his research on plant diseases using high-throughput plant phenotyping and deep learning at the CSU-Corteva Plant Adaptation Symposium. Journal publication from this research is coming soon. Great job Sai!​
09/2024: Lunch time with USDA-ARS team to celebrate the success of our first field data collection campaign of the sugar beet disease project.
09/2024: Dr. Phuong Dao is part of the team of the College of Agricultural Sciences to welcome and introduce our research in Digital Agriculture to the delegate from the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development and Universities from Romania. The meeting was also to discuss the establishment of faculty and student exchange and collaboration programs between CSU and Romanian Universities with funding from EU.
09/2024: Dr. Phuong Dao is invited to be a featured speaker at the upcoming Corteva Agriscience Plant Adaptation Symposium on October 4. The aims of this symposium is to connect big data, genetics and field phenotyping applications to improve the quality of our crops and their tolerance to stress, which is vital in this time of climate change that demands sustainable solutions. Dr. Dao's talk will focus on advanced lab-based plant phenotyping, field drone phenotyping, and AI in plant health and plant stress research and plant breeding.
08/2024: Congratulations to Dao Lab's undergraduate student Mike Russo for being awarded the prestigious NASA DEVELOP Internship for the Fall 2024. We look forward to seeing fruitful research outcomes from his internship.
08/2024: We are thrilled to share that Dr. Phuong Dao was recently awarded a USDA-NIFA grant ($500,000) to develop and implement an advanced high-throughput plant phenotyping system and associated research program. The phenotyping system offers rapid and precise real-time analyses of plant phenotypes impacted by pests, diseases, beneficial microbial communities, pesticides, and other biotic and abiotic stress. The system and its associated research are expected to accerlate our research and development in Digital and Climate-Smart Agriculture at Colorado State University. Furthermore, the system also allows us to train the next-generation agricultural scientists who are able to develop and apply digital technologies and data science in agricultural applications.
08/2024: Dr. Phuong Dao completed a 1-day Climate Across the Curriculum workshop hosted by the CSU Climate Initiative. This training program is designed to help instructors and faculty incorporate climate research, education, and discussion into their classrooms. ​The goal is to enhance students' and faculty's foundational knowledge of climate change and to leverage their academic expertise to foster climate-related discussions and initiatives on campus.
07/2024: Our research on Colorado wheat diseases is highlighted by CSU STRATA. In this project, we aim to develop a spectral database and a lab-to-field multimodal machine learning model/computer program for Colorado wheat disease detection and management. We also evaluate the potential of the technologies for practical applications at commercial scales. We would like to thank the Colorado Office of Economic Development and International Trade for the funding support.

Highlights in Linkedin
06/2024: We are thrilled to share that our 5-year USDA-ARS funded project "​BeetPAI: AI-enabled hyperspectral phenotyping to accelerate sugar beet breeding" (in collaboration with Dr. Kevin Dorn) has been launched. In this project, we integrate greenhouse experiments (with a high-throughput phenotyping) with field experiments (with drone hyperspectral imaging) to characterize sugar beet and disease interactions and to evaluate the scalability/transferability of our approach.

We would like to thank USDA-ARS for the funding support and collaboration. We look forward to conducting this innovative and impactful project.
06/2024: We are pleased to share our latest study on characterizing insect-plant interactions and insect feeding behavior through electrical penetration graphic signal using deep learning. A great collaboration between our group at Colorado State University, Université Sorbonne Paris Nord, and Indiana State University. The paper is under review in PLOS Computational Biology.

More details: check out our Preprint
06/2024: Congratulations to our Master Student Sydney Hedberg (Dr. Dao co-advises with Dr. Alan Knapp) for successfully defending her thesis entitled "Assessing Drought Sensitivity Across the Shortgrass Steppe Biome". Well-done Sydney!

Best of luck in your future academic/professional endeavours!
06/2024: Congratulations to our Postdoc Research Associate Nga Nguyen for her new journey as a Senior Research Associate at the Alliance of Bioversity International and International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT).

Best of luck in your future academic/professional endeavours!
05/2024: Dr. Phuong Dao gave an invited Tech Talk entitled "Digital Transformation in Agriculture with Hyperspectral Imaging and Artificial Intelligence" at the Ireland’s National Centre for AI (CeADAR), University College Dublin, Ireland​.
04/2024: Congratulations to Dao Lab's undergraduate researcher Emma Hoopes for winning one of the two "Excellence in Data Science Research" awards from the Data Science Research Institute for her presentation in Hyperspectral Remote Sensing and Machine Learning in crop disease detection and characterization at CSU undergraduate student symposium. This is an extremely competitive award since there were over 340 presentations across campus.
04/2024: Our undergraduate student Emma Hoopes presented her research (co-authored by Sai Pennam) at Colorado State University CURC student symposium using machine learning and close-range hyperspectral imaging in plant disease detection and characterization in collaboration with Dr. Kevin Dorn from USDA. Her research is supported by USDA-ARS and the Undergraduate Research Fellowship from the the College of Agricultural Sciences. Emma's presentation and poster can be found HERE.
03/2024: We successfully conduct the first field flight with our group's new HySpex Mjolnir VS-620 hyperspectral system (490 bands from 400-2500 nm) together with a LiDAR sensor from CSU Drone Center.​
02/2024: HySpex Mjolnir VS-620 hyperspectral system (490 bands from 400-2500 nm) is finally here in our Lab. Testing and mission planning are done. The system is ready to take off. Can't wait to do exciting precision agriculture research in the coming months/years.
02/2024: We are happy to share that our proposal "Multiscale automatic plant disease detection and rating with hyperspectral remote sensing" has been funded by Western Sugar Cooperative. We excited to implement this impactful project in collaboration with USDA-ARS Fort Collins.
12/2023: We are pleased to share that the Agricultural Data Science minor program and two new courses Agricultural Data Science and Geographic Information Systems in Agriculture that Dr. Phuong Dao developed and is leading have been approved and will be launched in the Fall 2024. This is a great opportunity for students to advance their skills and knowledge in the applications of data science and data analytics in Agriculture.
11/2023: Congratulations to our undergraduate researcher Emma Hoopes on being awarded the CAS Undergraduate Research Fellowship from the College of Agricultural Sciences. Emma will conduct her internship project that uses hyperspectral remote sensing and data science to assess and characterize viral diseases in Colorado winter wheat in Dao Lab in Spring 2024.
11/2023: We are happy to share that our proposal "Developing a Commercial High-Throughput Crop Disease Monitoring System with Drone Hyperspectral Imaging and Machine Learning" has been funded by the Colorado Office of Economic Development and International Trade (OEDIT) through the Advanced Industries Proof-of-Concept grant program, administered by STRATA.
09/2023: Dao Lab has been awarded two grants from Colorado Wheat Research Foundation (CWRF) to study diseases and weed herbicide resistance in wheat production system using drone hyperspectral remote sensing and machine learning.
01/2023: We are thrilled to share that Dr. Phuong Dao will be joining the Department of Agricultural Biology at Colorado State University as an Assistant Professor of Computational Agricultural Biology (focusing on remote sensing of precision agriculture) from August 2023. Dr. Dao will also lead the development of the Undergraduate Minor program in Agricultural Data Science of the department.
01/2023: Dr. Phuong Dao attends and presents his research at another interesting winter symposium of the NSF-ASCEND Biology Integration Institute at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
12/2022: Dr. Phuong Dao presents his study on "Assessing Genetically-Controlled Chemical Defense in Trembling Aspen in Response to Insect Herbivore Impact with Imaging Spectroscopy and LiDAR Data​" at American Geophysical Union Fall meeting.
01/2022: Dr. Phuong Dao receives the National Best PhD Thesis Award for his PhD thesis "Investigating Drought Impacts on Plant Functional Traits Using Hyperspectral Remote Sensing" from the Canadian Remote Sensing Society.
02/2022: Dr. Phuong Dao has joined the Austral Ecology journal (formerly known as Australian Journal of Ecology, an official journal of the Ecological Society of Australia) editorial board from 2022 and will serve as an associate editor for 2 years.