Naziru HALILU

SEP 2026 – JAN 2027

EMJMD Research Scholar (Mobility Track)

Agricultural University of Athens, Greece

Term 3 focus: Efficient water use, smart irrigation (30 ECTS)

Courses: Modelling Crop Water Requirements (6) · Smart Design and Management of Irrigation Systems (9) · Modelling for Sustainable Irrigation: Enhancing System Efficiency and Resilience (6) · Agri-environmental Legislation and Policies (3) · Technology Sharing and Transfer for Entrepreneurship (3) · Practical Exercise Integrating Disciplines III (3)

• Continued graduate-level research training in smart design and management of irrigation systems.
• Accomplished a complete farm-level irrigation and crop-growth decision-support tool, as measured by successful 4-step simulation (canopy, transpiration, biomass, yield) across five smallholder crops, by engineering NaCROP, a modular Python pipeline with a Tkinter desktop GUI for evapotranspiration, soil-water balance, and irrigation scheduling around Zaria, Nigeria. Data →
• Accomplished a soil-independent irrigation trigger law, a soil-gated management controllability map, and a rainfall-conditioned mulch water-balance and evaporation-drainage regime map, as measured by pooled R² rising from 0.48 to 0.75 (irrigation) and 0.23 to 0.70 (yield) once the trigger was re-expressed as root-zone depletion, drainage controllability rising with soil available water for most levers (Spearman rho up to +0.95, soil structure alone rho -0.58), and mulch-saved water shifting from irrigation saving to drainage above rain ×1.2 with climate-mulch interactions reaching 15% of irrigation, by running and analysing 10,190 Daisy simulations spanning 17 factorial experiments on precision irrigation and evaporation-control mulching across ten soils. Data → DOI →

JUN – AUG 2026

Summer Intern, Computer Vision Group

Dept. of Computer Engineering, Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria

• Accomplished cross-condition transfer of crop-disease recognition models, as measured by 64.4% classification accuracy (macro AUC 0.882 against a 5.3% chance baseline) across 19 disease classes on 1,543 field images, by extending the Geometry-Agnostic Contrastive Learning (GACL) framework with four new geometry-invariant neural components, formalized as a first-author paper under review at Biosystems Engineering (Elsevier). Data → DOI →

FEB – JUN 2026

EMJMD Research Scholar (Mobility Track)

University of Trás-os-Montes and Alto Douro (UTAD), Portugal

Term 2 focus: Precision agriculture for sustainable crop production (30 ECTS)

Courses: Precision Agriculture (6) · Identifying Soil and Crop Variability (6) · Precision Agriculture Machinery (6) · Preventive Management Strategy (6) · Reactive Management Strategy (3) · Practical Exercise Integrating Disciplines II (3)

• Accomplished cross-system precision-agriculture prediction and input-cost reduction, as measured by R² between 0.978 and 0.995 for grape ripening and maize yield regressions and a 2.69-tonne cut in lime demand, by integrating GIS, remote sensing, and machine learning pipelines across more than 65 hectares of Portuguese trial sites spanning three contrasting cropping systems. Data → DOI →
• Accomplished more reliable soil-nutrient and yield mapping, as measured by a roughly 20% reduction in residual kriging uncertainty across 17,864 samples on a 16.85-hectare maize field (Moran's I between 0.72 and 0.98, p < 0.001), by developing Multitask Singularity Regression Kriging (MSRK), coupling multifractal singularity indices with shared random forest models. Data → DOI →
• Accomplished predictive harvest-date forecasting for grape ripening, as measured by R² = 0.9784 and a maturity forecast of 25.5–27 °Bx, by building an NDVI and logarithmic regression model from field must samples across five sampling dates at a 6-hectare UTAD vineyard, Quinta de Nossa Senhora de Lurdes, Vila Real. Data →
• Accomplished a costed, spatially targeted pest-management programme, as measured by a sized pheromone diffuser plan (EUR 2,670.6–3,052.1) across 11 grape-variety blocks, by running terrain characterisation and a 25-trap spatial monitoring network for grape moth (Lobesia botrana) across a 42.97-hectare vineyard estate in the Douro Demarcated Region. Data →

SEP 2025 – 31 JAN 2026

EMJMD Research Scholar (Mobility Track)

Public University of Navarre, Spain

Term 1 focus: Technological bases for agricultural sustainability (30 ECTS)

Courses: Data Science and Analytics in Agriculture (6) · Geospatial Data Analysis (3) · Geoinformation and Remote Sensing (6) · Sensors and the Internet of Things (6) · Agricultural Systems Modelling (6) · Practical Exercise Integrating Disciplines I (3)

• Accomplished real-time, field-deployable crop-health screening, as measured by 33.8% balanced accuracy against a 4.55% chance baseline across 22 disease classes on 1,543 validation images, by building a fourteen-module open-source pipeline for RGB/multispectral vegetation indexing, GLCM texture analysis, and CNN/Faster R-CNN inference. Data → DOI →
• Accomplished radiometrically consistent multi-temporal vegetation monitoring, as measured by a 39% and 31% reduction in temporal NDVI variance for water and rooftop reference targets respectively (R² of at least 0.999 fidelity to raw NDVI), by designing STADOS, a five-stage adaptive dark-object subtraction framework validated on real Sentinel-2 imagery over Portuguese corn parcels. Data → DOI →
• Accomplished accurate land-suitability mapping for livestock slurry application, as measured by RMSE = 7.78 and R² = 0.77 on a held-out set of 127 sites, outperforming three competing kriging and deep-learning alternatives, by building a two-layer GIS and regression-kriging pipeline across 550 spatially cross-validated observations over 14.35 square kilometres near Tudela, Spain. Data →
• Accomplished a 47.8% reduction in annual soil loss and Nash-Sutcliffe model efficiency between 0.88 and 0.94, as measured against a vegetative erosion-control strategy for an agricultural gully system, by building a Bayesian-grounded digital twin combining hydrological, hydraulic, and hybrid CNN-BiLSTM-attention sediment models (hold-out R² = 0.90). Data → DOI →
• Built a six-notebook vector and raster GIS, Sentinel-1/2 remote sensing, and classification course package covering supervised and unsupervised land-cover classification in Python and Google Earth Engine. Data →

MAR 2024 – MAR 2025

Undergraduate Project Assistantships

Depts. of Agricultural & Bioresources Engineering and Animal Science, Ahmadu Bello University

• Contributed data collection, statistical analysis, and literature review across concurrent undergraduate research projects spanning water and irrigation systems (hydroponics, greywater reuse, spatial infiltration, stream water quality), soil and erosion assessment (soil erodibility, rainfall erosivity), and postharvest and animal systems (evaporative cooling, fish pond systems, Moringa-based animal nutrition).

2024 – 2025

Project Assistant (Remote Data Lead), Smart Greenhouse Automation

IAR-ABU, Nigeria

• Automated greenhouse environmental control by engineering adaptive irrigation-scheduling algorithms in Python that fused real-time soil-moisture and microclimate telemetry, serving as remote data lead for the full sensor-to-actuation pipeline.

2022 – 2024

Student Research Assistant, Precision Crop Systems

NAERLS, Nigeria

• Enabled high-throughput field phenotyping by training and validating CNN-based crop-stress detection models in TensorFlow that reached 78% classification accuracy on multispectral UAV imagery, and by automating UAV flight-path planning for data acquisition.

2022 – 2024

Assistant Farm Manager (concurrent, part-time)

Yankari Nasarawa Farms, Nigeria

• Sustained animal welfare across a commercial poultry facility by managing automated climate-control and water-dosing systems.

2021 – 2022

Project Assistant, Smart Irrigation & Water Systems

BOMO-Basin Project, Nigeria

• Automated water delivery across a one-hectare smart drip-irrigation array by implementing closed-loop control logic and quantifying feedback-loop performance linking real-time soil-moisture data to scheduling.

2017 – 2020

Research Intern

NCAM, Ilorin & IAR, Zaria, Nigeria

• Benchmarked mechanization efficiency of locally engineered machinery by building Python data-logging pipelines at NCAM, and supported baseline hydrological research at IAR by collecting and documenting soil-profile and environmental data.

2024 – PRESENT

Virtual Secondary School Teacher

Remote, Nigeria

• Delivered ongoing remote instruction to secondary school students alongside graduate studies.

FOUNDER

Nhalilu's Biogas Plant and Sales Company

Registered with the Small and Medium Enterprises Development Agency of Nigeria (SMEDAN), Bioprocess Engineering

• Founded and registered a biogas production and sales venture, applying bioprocess engineering principles learned through academic research to a working commercial operation.

View SMEDAN Certificate of Registration →

2025 – expected Jun to Aug 2027

Erasmus Mundus Joint Master's Degree (EMJMD)

Cutting-Edge Technologies for Sustainable Agriculture

Public University of Navarre, Spain · Sep 2025 to Jan 2026

UTAD, Portugal · Feb 2026 to Jun 2026

Agricultural University of Athens, Greece · Sep 2026 to Jan 2027

View certificate/enrolment record →

2019 – 2024

Bachelor of Engineering (B.Eng.), Agricultural & Bioresources Engineering

Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, Nigeria

CGPA: 4.77/5.00 · Top 1% of graduating cohort · First Class Honours

View transcript/certificate →

2016 – 2018

National Diploma, Agricultural Engineering Technology

Division of Agricultural Colleges, Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria

CGPA: 3.78/4.00 · Top 1% · Distinction

View transcript/certificate →

SEP 2026

Published GIS monitoring datasets for grape moth and vineyard ripening (Brix) from the Douro and UTAD field seasons, both now archived on Zenodo with a DOI.

AUG 2026

Two papers accepted for publication in the International Journal of Research and Scientific Innovation, covering sediment transport modelling and real time vegetation indexing.

AUG 2026

Archived STADOS, the radiometric harmonization framework, on Zenodo, alongside updated releases of the Zaria irrigation DSS and NaCROP.

MAR 2025

Paper accepted for presentation at the 6th African Regional Conference on Irrigation and Drainage in Abuja, on predicting sediment transport rates in agricultural watercourses.

2025

Awarded the Erasmus Mundus Joint Master Scholarship for SUSTAGRI, beginning graduate study across three universities in Spain, Portugal, and Greece.

CRITIQUE

How Agricultural Intelligence Can Revolutionize Farming

World Economic Forum, Jan 2026

Points to a growing digital divide, large operations adopting AI quickly while many smallholders remain priced out.

CRITIQUE

Technology Diffusion in Agriculture

World Intellectual Property Report 2026, WIPO

Farmers face costs starting above EUR 16,500 just to implement one mapping technology, and risk being locked into a single vendor without interoperability standards. Some have abandoned precision tools entirely once the numbers stopped adding up.

CRITIQUE

Precision Agriculture: Benefits and Challenges for Technology Adoption and Use

U.S. Government Accountability Office

High upfront acquisition costs remain prohibitive for farmers with limited capital, and unresolved questions over who actually owns farm data continue to slow adoption of AI tools.

CRITIQUE

Agricultural Technology Adoption, New Tech for 2026

Farmonaut

Training, financing, and basic infrastructure such as rural connectivity remain unresolved barriers, especially for smallholder farmers who need equitable access, not just better tools.

CRITIQUE

Employee Perception of Precision Technology Use at the Dairy Farm

Peer reviewed study

A shortage of skilled labour able to operate precision tools, and language barriers for migrant farm workers, are consistently underestimated obstacles compared to the technology itself.