Dr Cheryl McCarthy, University of Southern Queensland (USQ), National Centre for Engineering in Agriculture (NCEA) The Queensland Government has announced the successful recipients of the extremely competitive Accelerate Fellowships (part of the Accelerate Queensland Science and Innovation Program). Dr Cheryl McCarthy was awarded a mid-career fellowship, valued at $300,000 over three years, for her research project RPAS (UAV) automated surveillance of crop hotspots for improved management. Dr Cheryl McCarthy said the fellowship would help her develop technology that makes real-time information about unhealthy crop hotspots more accessible to cotton and grains farmers. “The cost of weeds to Australian farmers is estimated at between $2 and $4 billion each year, and yield losses ranging from 25-100 percent can result from grain crop diseases,” she said. “My technology will couple rapid, field-scale data collection from a RPAS (remotely piloted aircraft system, also known as drones) with automated image analysis to target farming inputs. “This will increase on-farm productivity and reduce use of inputs including herbicides, pesticides and fertilisers by timely identification of spatially-variable crop requirements. “The additional funding from the fellowship will allow to me to collaborate with more organisations with expertise in this field and develop this technology further.” The fellowships encourage collaboration between universities and industry. Dr Cheryl McCarthy’s project is in partnership with the University of New England and V-TOL Aerospace.