Kaiyu Guan has been on the Faculty of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign since 2016, when he arrived as a Blue Waters Professor for the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA). He is an Associate Professor in National Resources and Environmental Sciences as well as an affiliated professor in both computer science (since 2021) and informatics and geography (since 2016).
His interdisciplinary research brings together plant ecology, hydrology, biogeochemistry, and climate science satellite/airborne data, fieldwork, supercomputing, and machine learning to revolutionize how we monitor and model plant-water-nutrient interactions for agricultural ecosystems. His work aims to increase our society’s resilience and adaptability to maintain sustainability of ecosystem services, food security and water resources under the influence of climate change and anthropogenic drivers. 
Dr. Guan provides solutions for real-life problems, such as large-scale crop monitoring and forecasting, water management and sustainability, and global food security. He uses satellite data, computational models, field work, and machine learning approaches to address how climate and human practices affect crop productivity, water resource availability, and ecosystem functioning.