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The buzz of a drone hovers over an expansive green fairway. Your smartphone pings in your pocket as it receives a notification and important information from above. This is the future of turfgrass management in the golf industry, and College of the Environment and Life Sciences (CELS) alumnus Jason VanBuskirk is at the forefront. \u201cI love turfgrass, I love technology,\u201d says VanBuskirk, whose technology has helped fuel a global corporation.<\/p>\n
A 2006 graduate of CELS Department of Plant Sciences and Entomology\u2019s Turfgrass Management program, VanBuskirk\u2019s interest in turf was born out of necessity during high school. \u201cI was 15 years old and I wanted to buy a car,\u201d says VanBuskirk, who started working at a golf course to earn extra money. That’s where he developed an interest in what would become a lifelong passion for turfgrass management. \u201cIt found a really soft spot in my heart,\u201d says VanBuskirk. \u201cI fell in love with how the game is actually managed, manicured, and taken care of.\u201d<\/p>\n
After talking with his manager about college-level turf management programs, he set his sights on URI. There, his love for turf continued to grow. \u201cWe are control freaks in an uncontrollable environment,\u201d VanBuskirk says as he describes turfgrass management. \u201cBut that\u2019s the coolest part of the job.\u201d After graduating, he landed a job at a different golf course and became a golf course superintendent by the age of 24.<\/p>\n
He credits his experiences at CELS with helping him develop the skills needed to succeed in the turf management field. \u201cCELS gave me the foundational building blocks to understand the most I can about the actual environment,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s a great institution. The faculty there are passionate, and they care about the students.\u201d<\/p>\n
In addition to his interest in turf, VanBuskirk has always had a fascination with technology. \u201cI grew up with technology in my pocket and I really enjoyed the possibility of having connections all over the place,\u201d he says. VanBuskirk found ways to combine his passion for turf and tech, which eventually led to the formation of his small start-up company, Turf Cloud, an idea he conceived while working at a local golf course. His new creation gave golf course superintendents the ability to digitally store and organize turf management data pertaining to employee duties, equipment, or agricultural monitoring on a cloud-based platform that can be conveniently accessed from anywhere via a smartphone, tablet, or laptop.<\/p>\n
VanBuskirk\u2019s cutting-edge technology caught the attention of a global tech company in the golf industry that was searching for a database storage system. GreenSight, an international Boston-based company, uses drone systems to gather data and aerial imagery for the golf industry relevant to turfgrass health, such as water usage, soil temperature, disease symptoms, and evaporation rates. \u201cYou can really get out there and have a bird\u2019s eye view of what your property looks like,\u201d says VanBuskirk.<\/p>\n
GreenSight\u2019s drones, containing three camera sets, have the ability to record high-resolution, near-infrared, and thermal data. However, GreenSight lacked the ability to store data collected by the drones. That’s when they turned to VanBuskirk’s company for its digital database system. GreenSight liked it so much, they purchased the company and VanBuskirk joined their team.<\/p>\n
VanBuskirk, GreenSight’s vice president of sales and marketing, is excited about the possibilities offered through the combined drone and data packaging platform. The technology, for example, is helping to promote sustainability in the golf industry by helping golf courses make better land management decisions, such as preventing over-watering.\u00a0 \u201cHow are we going to make things more sustainable?” asks VanBuskirk. “Apply less chemistry, apply less water, and just be a better steward of our environment.\u201d And with more and more people becoming interested in the company, VanBuskirk is helping push this innovative technology across the globe. \u201cWe\u2019re doing daily imagery for courses in Japan, we\u2019re trying to work with another company in South Korea, we did a number of flights and missions in Switzerland,\u201d he notes.<\/p>\n
Reflecting on his CELS experience and the accomplishments of his career so far, VanBuskirk is grateful for the time he\u2019s spent pursuing both of his passions for turf and tech. \u201cIt\u2019s a labor of love, is really what it comes down to,\u201d he says. \u201cIf what you\u2019re doing is what you love, then it\u2019s not a job\u201d.<\/p>\n
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The buzz of a drone hovers over an expansive green fairway. Your smartphone pings in your pocket as it receives a notification and important information from above. This is the future of turfgrass management in the golf industry, and College of the Environment and Life Sciences (CELS) alumnus Jason VanBuskirk is at the forefront. \u201cI love turfgrass, I love technology,\u201d says VanBuskirk…Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":13107,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[31,28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13077","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-profiles","category-research-profiles"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/cels\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13077","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/cels\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/cels\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/cels\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13077"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/cels\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13077\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17448,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/cels\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13077\/revisions\/17448"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/cels\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/cels\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13077"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/cels\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13077"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/cels\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13077"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}