DR. NIKETA GANDHI

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RESEARCH

Research Interests

My primary research relates to area of eAgriculture, use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) to improve the production and sustainability of agricultural industry, use of geospatial and data mining techniques to interrogate climate, land use, soil and economic data to create decision support systems for agricultural stakeholders including government, extension workers and farmers. Other interests include,

· Artificial Intelligence (AI)

· Machine Learning (ML)

· Data Mining (DM)

· Geographic Information System (GIS)

· Digital Image Processing (DIP)

· Decision Support Systems (DSS)

· Internet of Things (IoT)

· Cyber Security

· Healthcare

· Human Psychology

· Sleep Sciences

· Social Networks

Skills

· Highly innovative, motivated and self directed researcher.

· Ability to quickly learn new technologies.

· Ability to conduct quantitative and qualitative studies.

· Ability to collaborate with people from many different disciplines.

· Ability to thrive in a fast-paced, ever-changing work environment.

· Excellent written and oral communication and interpersonal skills.

Technical Skills

Programming: Assembly language, C, C++, Java, Visual Basic, Unix shell scripting, SQL, Lisp, Scratch, Python, Android.

Mathematical and Statistical Analysis: Matlab, Scilab, Octave, Mathematica, SPSS, R.

Web Development:HTML, CSS, Javascript, PHP, XML.

Packages: NumPy, SciPy, PyTorch, OpenCV, matplotlib, SimpleCV, SimpleAI.

Utilities: Dreamweaver, LaTeX, Tableau, Weka, QGIS.

My Ph.D Computer Science Thesis

Title : Information System Framework for Sustainable Agriculture

Supervisor : Dr. Leisa Armstrong, School of Science, Edith Cowan University, Perth, Western Australia and Adjunct Faculty at University Department of Computer Science, University of Mumbai, India

My thesis proposes a conceptual Information System Framework for sustainable agriculture in India. This was achieved through the development of a conceptual framework for sustainable rice production. The conceptual system framework centres on the provision of a Decision Support System (DSS) that can be used for rice crop prediction for Maharashtra state and in selected climatic zones of India. The research carried out a number of data mining, data visualization and geospatial techniques on a large complex agricultural data set. A crop prediction model was used to develop a prototype DSS tool for rice crop prediction in India. The DSS framework proposes the application of data mining techniques to crop DSS, which can contribute to better farmer decision making in the sustainable management of Indian rice crop production. The DSS can be used to visualize and predict rice crop production under different climate scenarios.

Research Projects

The use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) tools by the rural farmers in Ratnagiri district of Maharashtra, India

Collaborative research project with Dr. Leisa Armstrong, Edith Cowan University, Perth, Western Australia

The use of ICT by Ratnagari district farmers to deliver agricultural information and improve their decision making. This project surveyed a group of 100 farmers from the Ratnagari District of Maharashtra to examine use of ICT tools and their attitudes to using these tools to improve their farming. Factors such as age, level of education and land ownership was found to influence their usage of ICT. However, a majority of farmers believed that ICT could improve their production and quality of crops and increase their earnings.

Publications:

Leisa Armstrong, Niketa Gandhi and Kavita Lanjekar, Use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) tools by rural farmers in Ratnagiri District of Maharastra, India, IEEE International conference on Communication Systems and Network Technologies (CSNT), Rajkot, Gujarat, India, 2012.

Leisa Armstrong and Niketa Gandhi, Factors Influencing The Use Of Information And Communication Technology (ICT) Tools By The Rural Farmers In Ratnagiri District Of Maharashtra, India, The Third National Conference on Agro-Informatics and Precision Agriculture (AIPA), Hyderabad, India, 2012.

Niketa Gandhi and Leisa Armstrong, ICTs for Agricultural Extension: A study in Ratnagiri district of Maharashtra, India, Ninth Conference of the Asian Federation for Information Technology in Agriculture (AFITA), Perth, Australia, 2014.

An Expert System for Diagnosis of Sugarcane Disease and Prescribing Treatments

Collaborative research project with Mr. Prasad Gaikwad, R. D. National College affiliated to University of Mumbai, India

An expert system was designed for farmers of Bawada village, Indapur tehsil, Pune district of Maharashtra to prescribe treatments for the detected disease on the basis of the symptoms on sugarcane. The system also suggested preventive measures to avoid the possibility of the disease occurring in the future. This project also surveyed a group of 75 farmers and 12 extension workers from the Bawada village to determine the immediate agricultural information needs of the farmers and further challenges faced in getting agricultural information using an ICT tool.

Publications:

Prasad Gaikwad and Niketa Gandhi, An Expert System for Diagnosis of Sugarcane Disease and Prescribing Treatments, UGC Sponsored National Conference on Computing, Communication and Information Technology (CCIT), Maharashtra, India, 2013.

Prasad Gaikwad and Niketa Gandhi, Information Needs and Challenges associated with the use of ICT among the farmers, International Congress on Innovative Trends in Information Technologies and Computing Sciences for Competitive World Order (ITITCSCWO), New Delhi, India, 2013.