Alireza (Ali) Pourreza is a new UC Cooperative Extension assistant advisor at UC ANR Kearney Agricultural Research and Extension Center, agricultural engineering. His research and extension area includes spray technology, precision agriculture, automation and robotic control, sensor design, geographic information systems (GIS) and remote sensing, computer vision, spectroscopy, machine learning, and big data. He completed his graduate studies at the University of Florida and obtained his Ph.D. degree in Agricultural and Biological Engineering under the advisement of Wonsuk “Daniel” Lee, professor in the Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering at the University of Florida. Pourreza also received an interdisciplinary certificate in GIS and Remote Sensing. Ali holds a master's degree in Mechanics of Agricultural Machinery and a bachelor's degree in Farm Machinery Engineering.

Pourreza's doctoral dissertation was focused on interdisciplinary research in citrus diseases detection using computer vision, and machine learning. He developed two real-time, vision-based sensors for citrus Huanglongbing (HLB) disease detection for laboratory and field experiments. He also developed an autonomous field inspector robot and a vision-based sensor for on-site diagnosis of citrus diseases.