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Comment by jarmitage | Hacker News Reader

If you don’t mind me asking, what is/was your educational/career route that led you to the knowledge that you currently have? It seems interestingly diverse, like you have biology, agriculture, but also some mechanical?

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I got a degree in biosystems engineering (it covers electrical mechanical and chemical eng broadly from a systems perspective focused on bio production) and worked on research farms (organic academic and private viticulture). Then did some academic soil formulations research in greenhouse / nursery setting. Currently I'm employed part time on upwork doing chemical formulations reverse engineering for green products.

Fascinating, thank you - I have some more questions if you don't mind! Was that your first degree or did you switch to this domain from something else? Would you care to name/recommend your degree program, and any key texts, for someone interested in following in your footsteps?

I got a visual comm degree, worked in video production for awhile, but decided to change fields. It kinda took a lot of time and set me back, but I prefer this kind of work. UC Davis has a good ag program, I think Purdue is highest ranked, Arkansas and NC state are good too. I went to UTK, it was not bad. The course work was just generic engineering stuff until junior level - then you get some really interesting bioprocess industry stuff and Sr level is focused completely a series of design projects. Learned the most there really, because it's about being able to quickly do research and apply it to a design that has to be presented for critiqued review. It's pretty fun for me to get presented with a new little niche problem and go down the rabbit hole trying to figure it out - after you do that a bunch of times you build up a pretty diverse knowledge base and it makes things quicker.

If you tell me which subject you're trying to learn more about I could recommend something. There's not really any text that covers that field broadly, you might start with a soil science book - I'd recommend Soil Science Simplified as intro or The Nature and Properties of Soils for a complete in depth text. Those won't tell you anything about nursery soils though, only field soil.

I added my email to my profile, feel free to hmu.

Much appreciated, thank you for sharing!

I don't have a specific interest at the moment, but have been more curious about this area recently after getting into regen ag podcasts.

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