The Legacy of Dr. Qiang Zhang

Welcome to the University of Manitoba Resources for Agricultural Engineering podcast! Your gateway to discovering the latest innovations, research, and practical solutions in agricultural engineering.

In this legacy episode, host Dr. Uduak Edet interviews Dr. Qiang Zhang, a renowned faculty member in the Department of Biosystems Engineering at the University of Manitoba, specializing in Agricultural Structures and Environment. They discuss his journey in agricultural engineering, the creation of the Air Quality Lab, his impactful research in controlled environments and grain storage, and insights on teaching, mentorship, and collaboration. Dr. Zhang also shares advice for young researchers and reflects on her legacy in the field.

Transcript

Uduak Edet: 0:15

Hello and welcome to the University of Manitoba's Resources for Agricultural Engineering podcast. I am your host, Uduak Edet, an agricultural research extension engineer in the Department of Biosystem Engineering. This podcast is your gateway to discovering the latest innovation, research, and practical solutions in agricultural engineering. Our mission is to forge meaningful connections with the agricultural community and help farmers address their engineering needs and aspirations. Today, I have the privilege of speaking with Dr. Qiang Zhang, a professor of biosystem engineering at the University of Manitoba and a registered professional engineer in Manitoba. Dr. Zhang is an expert in agricultural structures and environments. His research focuses on controlled environments for animals and plants as well as grain storage ecosystem. Dr. Zhang is widely recognized for his contributions to agricultural and biosystem engineering and has served as a president of the Canadian Society for Bioengineering and actively collaborates with governments, industry, and international partners. Beyond his research, he is a dedicated mentor and educator whose commitment to excellence has inspired generations of engineers and enriched communities far beyond the university. Dr. Zhang, before we discuss your research, can you please share a bit about your background and what first sparks your interest in pursuing graduate studies in agricultural engineering?

Qiang Zhang: 1:55

Hello, everybody. Thanks, Uduak, for that nice uh introduction. I grew up in China, my hometown, southeast part of uh China. And after completing my high school, I actually went to work on a farm for three years because all the universities were closed in China. So then I went to university and finished my undergraduate program and then went to Penn State, to US actually to complete my master's and the PhD. Now, what inspired me into egg engineering? I don't have a clear answer for that because I was assigned to the egg engineering program when I was uh in China. But I do have three years of sort of experience working on a farm. I was joking with the people because the house I lived in for three years actually is next door to a pig farm. So that's how I got connected to pigs for for the rest of my life. So that's sort of my brief uh background, not too complicated.

Uduak Edet: 2:49

Thank you so much. How did that spot lead you to join the University of Manitoba, specifically Department of Biosystem Engineering?

Qiang Zhang: 2:57

When I finished my PhD uh in at Penn State in the States, and I was looking for a basically a postdoc position for one year. One of my major professors actually was on sabbatical at the University of Manitoba. And he sort of introduced me to the former department head of biosystems engineering, Dr. Ross Bully, and told him uh what I'm interested in. And uh Dr. Bully actually introduced me to Dr. Bill Mill, who's actually well known in the field of grain storage. Now that is sort of the logistics part of it. Now, what I'm really interested in actually is grain storage, because my master's and PhD are focused on grain storage structures, you know, the mechanical properties of grain. There are only actually very few universities in North America offers research programs in grain storage area. University of Manitoba was one of them, or is one of them, and also Penn State. So that's how my connection sort of established. I actually met Professor Ron Burton at SABE, uh, who's actually another senior professor in the department. So because we was we have the same interest in grain storage. That's sort of how I got to University of Manitoba.

Uduak Edet: 4:06

Interesting. What challenges did you face as a new internationally educated faculty member? And how did you overcome them?

Qiang Zhang: 4:14

Well, the way I want to put it is if you enjoy doing something, there's no challenges. I didn't feel like there was anything like challenging. You know, research, you know, yeah, you you put my your minds to it, get things going, and it's not really challenging uh task. The only thing I would think of challenging actually is not the teaching part. Because as a sort of immigrant, you have different the culture background that actually affects your teaching. I still remember the first class I taught was to agriculture students, and I sort of followed my undergraduate teaching experience. So that didn't work out. So that was a challenge. I have to modify my teaching style to suit the culture aspect of the education. So that's a big part of that.

Uduak Edet: 4:55

What inspired you to pursue work like a research program in agricultural structures and environments, specifically controlled environments for animal plants and grain storage ecosystem?

Qiang Zhang: 5:08

I got into this program, but it was not by my choice, but I really enjoy uh what I was working on because when I actually first went to uh Penn State, my interest actually was uh soil mechanics, like the the track of driving on in the field. So that was my interest. So when I went there, there was uh no one actually working in that area because that was sort of the old area. So I picked up grain storage, and then I find out there's actually common elements between the soil mechanics and the grain storage. So specifically, I was looking at the the mechanical properties of grain, which actually is just as complicated as soil. When I started my master's degree, I look at this whole problem of grain, how it deforms when you put the load on it, and how it behaves when you put it in the into the bin. And then I noticed very few theories out there, but I looked at the soil mechanics. There's tons of theories there, started about 100 years ago. So then that's how I started my master's and PhD research. I actually took the theory of soil mechanics, applied to the grain storage. The more I got into it, it becomes more sort of interesting because I looked at the fundamental properties of grain. I said, well, this is something I really want to spend my life actually working on it. Now, obviously, that is uh the grain storage is a pretty narrow area. In agriculture, there's a broader area of structures and the environment sort of connected together. Uh green storage structure is part of the structure, part of the structures and the environment. But my major professor actually was working on both structures and the environment. I got exposed to the environment part. And then I looked at, oh, this is just as interesting as the structure. In my first sabbatical, I took, I went to Iowa State, and they have a large animal environment program. So I got into that. I said, I want to start another research program in this particular area. I was working with the little picklets and then looking at the heating requirement of that. Fascinating. We actually developed a very nice program in that in that area. That I got into green storage structures for my master's and PhD, then got into the environment part actually through my sabbatical.

Uduak Edet: 7:08

Let's look at your research program. I know you've touched on it. Can you discuss about the developments and the objective of your research program, the one you actually established in the University of Manitoba?

Qiang Zhang: 7:22

Well, when I first came here and I was working with the Dr. Bill Muir as on grain storage, so that's sort of the stuff I did at Penn State. I continued on with that. So I looked uh in-depth into the grain properties and the mechanical behavior, the grain storage structures. And as I said earlier, so then I went to Iowa State. I started a new program in animal environment, controlled environment area. When I came back from uh Iowa State after sabbatical, there was actually a top of change in agriculture landscape. So a little bit of background is the subsidies uh for grain transportation by the government was taken away. A lot of investment went to pig production, but that creates a problem. That's sort of the first project I sort of started with in animal air quality area. So I moved sort of from the controlled environment to older, which is all part of the environment. So I started an older program, and that actually sort of uh led me to more into air quality and later on from air quality to airborne uh disease transmission. And later I moved from the the whole airflow things to uh vertical, smart vertical farming with uh the digital technology. If I look at the the sort of milestones, so the grain storage, animal controlled environment for animals, and the older airborne trans disease transmission for animals, then the vertical, smart vertical farming. It's all connected because the fundamental principles are still the same. We're basically looking at the heat transfer, we're looking at fluid dynamics, you know, we're looking at some interaction between biological systems and uh physical systems. The only thing new now is at a later stage when this digital technology came along. So that's how I moved to the smart vertical farming.

Uduak Edet: 9:04

So, which of your research contribution do you believe has the most impact on industry, academia, or the society?

Qiang Zhang: 9:11

I this is a sort of difficult to measure. You know, some people measure with publication. I don't do that. I I'm looking at more, you know, if I did something, the industry likes it. They adapted the technology or the knowledge I developed. That's the way I want to measure. In the green storage area, the some work we did, that actually has been adopted by some standards, like on the particular loading conditions, that affects part of the grain industry. So the one I'm interested in is on the structure, like green bean manufacture or in the animal environment area. I think the work I started with Professor Hongwi Xin at Iowa State on the heat pad for picklets. So that actually has a huge impact on the industries. In old days, farmers used infrared lamps for heating, pick ferro facilities, but now most people actually use heat pad. We actually did a lot of fundamental work on the heat pad, uh, how big the pad is supposed to be, the surface area, and then how much heat action is required, and what temperature is required. We did all that work, it's it's used by the industry. The other project on the controlled environment area is the energy efficient greenhouses. I worked with the Manitoba Hydro to actually look at the sort of energy efficient greenhouse facilities. Uh that project actually has a lot of inquiries from industry, from individuals. The impact was, I don't have a number, but it's it's huge because just the amount of inquiries I get, I know people are interested in the project. That's the way I want to measure the impact.

Uduak Edet: 10:31

There's this talk now about AI getting into different areas of livelihood, whether it's in banking, finance, education, technology. How do you see emerging technologies such as AI or smart systems shaping the future of your research area?

Qiang Zhang: 10:48

I look at two sides. I got very excited when I see what AI can do. And I got scared too. You know, at one point I was joking. I said, uh we're gonna be replaced by AI or digital technology with AI or together. So I normally treat that as a one system because when you're talking about AI for agriculture, you also have to use the digital technology to go sort of hand in hand. The way I reviewed, it's gonna have a huge impact on agriculture. Us as agriculture engineers, our job will be affected. Now, the way I want to put it is if you start now to learn how to use AI to your advantage, then you'll be okay. You'll be good, you're actually gonna be doing better. But if you try to avoid it, bury your head in sand, you could be replaced by AI at some point. But I think the way it's gonna work is as agriculture engineer, we actually will be sort of collaborating with AI. When you design something, old days, I guess you try different uh options, then you select uh materials, but it's very limited because every time you change something, you have to redo the calculation. So the design is an iterative process, right? That takes a lot of time to do it. The options you're trying, it's actually very limited. You cannot possibly try different combinations. Think about AI. If you design something, you want to change the configuration, or you're looking at the materials, what materials to use. You leave that with AI. You tell AI say, hey, I want to achieve this. What are the options there in terms of the material or the configuration? The AI can actually do the quick iteration for you. Then use AI, you can actually save a lot of time, but looking at a lot more options, then eventually you can actually optimize your design as an engineer. Now, from the controlled environment point of view, AI definitely will change things. So at this point, if we actually try to control the environment, we set the temperature, humidity, or something else, or CO2. We think that's best for animals, for plants.

Uduak Edet: 12:38

But what do they think?

Qiang Zhang: 12:39

If animal can tell you, no, I don't like that. We can actually use digital technology and AI to actually sort of communicate with animals or monitor their behavior and use that actually to control the environment, not just based on our experience or based on our laboratory data to actually set the temperature. Even we have a good laboratory data to set the conditions for animals, but things could change. They may need different temperatures in the morning than afternoon or day and night. So you can't possibly go there to adjust your thermostat in every 10 minutes or half an hour. But if you leave it with digital technology and you can optimize. The other thing is farmers, if they try to run a facility, then they can sort of do a good job in looking after animals. But livestock farming actually is more than that. You have to look at the market, you know, the feed, the pork price, all that. You have to put all that together. AI can help you to do that. Huge impact. We have to adapt, learn how to work with AI.

Uduak Edet: 13:34

You said something about that. You're also scared about AI. What's what are your fears?

Qiang Zhang: 13:40

My fear is as an engineer, you know, if AI can actually design things, what we're gonna do. We're gonna lose our job. That's the from the professional point of view. There's a lot of talk about you know how the AI is gonna replace humans. I believe you know AI can replace some of our jobs. But if we learn how to work with AI, then uh we don't have to be scared. So we can actually take the advantage of AI.

Uduak Edet: 14:04

So, with this being said, what skills should young researchers in your field focus on developing?

Qiang Zhang: 14:11

Well, they have to look at the the future, uh, how the future is gonna change in this particular discipline or in a particular research uh area. I saw some uh young faculty members when they started a job here, and they are so focused on getting funding and publishing papers. And I would say, yeah, give yourself some time and uh sit down to think about what you want to do now, what action is gonna happen in your area, and then try to sort of look into the long-term plan and we're looking at five or ten or even twenty years. That's very critical. You know, I need to get my tenure, so I have to publish three papers this year. That is something it's important. I I don't think that that's a challenge for most people now. Publish three papers probably not gonna be a big challenge, but you do have to look at the long-term development in your particular area. So that is one of the skills actually the young people would need that section is the critical thinking. You know, there's so much information out there, and how do you ship through the information or distill the information to actually find the real good stuff in it? So that's very critical. The other thing is probably communication, uh, especially communication with farmers. In our profession, we need to talk to farmers to figure out what they need to actually find out what are the problems out there. So that the communication skills is very important.

Uduak Edet: 15:26

You said something about communication and also talking to farmers. What's the biggest challenge or barriers in terms of collaboration, whether within academic or even industry?

Qiang Zhang: 15:39

Yeah, there's uh sort of two types of collaboration. One is you said with farmers, with industry, the other one is with researchers from within or outside of your university community. There's two problems a little different. That's look at the collaboration with industry and the farmers. Now that actually requires the researcher to actually know the industry, to know how to talk to the farmers, as I mentioned earlier. If you don't know the problems or the needs of the farmers, you cannot just work with farmers. And you you're gonna have to understand the needs there, and then you can work with them. Now, one of the challenges there is actually, I guess, the current system, you want to get promotion tenure, you have to publish paper. Now, sometimes working with farmers, you may not get a lot of publication out of it. You solve a particular problem. There's a balance you have to weigh carefully. Now, collaboration with other researchers that actually requires you reach out and then are willing to actually spend the time, not looking for the return. Now, the way I want to put that way, sometime you talk to people and then yeah, everything was good, and uh, well, I guess uh you didn't get the money or your group didn't get funded so that everything stuck. You you basically wasted all your time. And by that, you have to be prepared to do that because not every collaborative project actually will end up with funding than the graduate students. Some actually, most of them probably will not, and some actually will. Then you have to be also open-minded. You have to know other industry or other researcher fields. That actually takes a lot of experience because what you're doing maybe it's focusing on something in agriculture, but it could be applicable to other fields. When I was working on air quality in barns, then I was talking to people in medicine. They were talking about air quality disease transmission in emergency rooms and ambulances. I said, Oh yeah, I it's the same problem. We're looking at airflow and the emission rate, and how does how do you change all that? And we put in uh quite a few proposals together. Only one success a couple of years back. All the stuff I did earlier, put in the proposals. We didn't get funded. We spent time and effort, but there was not really much return. But return power is it's invisible because of that calibration, that sort of sets the stepstones for the future calibration. Even you don't get money this time around, but there'll be other possibilities in the future. I'll give you an example. Uh, my air quality work. I work with Dr. Kevin Coombs from Medicine, also Dr. David Levin in our own department. They both are actually microbiologists. When I was doing the airborne disease transmission, I don't know how to measure the virus, how to do the platinum other thing. I want to talk to them. Now, this actually started with something I said earlier. We actually tried to improve the air quality in emergency rooms. I was working with people there. So that sets the foundation for me to work with the people for medicine. If there's an opportunity, you know, jump on it. And if it doesn't work out this time, or if you don't get money this time, but it's gone, then eventually it's gonna lead you to some successful collaborative projects.

Uduak Edet: 18:30

I know you've answered this question, but I just still want to answer, axe it's just maybe in case you have any additional thing to say. How do you build trust and long-term partnership with colleagues across discipline? Because sometimes you feel, oh, like you talk about publication, personality, there's also individual interest. So, how do you build that trust so that the other researcher would feel, okay, yes, this person also has my interest in collaborating with me and not just trying to use me to achieve their own goal?

Qiang Zhang: 19:00

The key here is it's willing to contribute and willing to spend time. Don't want to look at, you know, okay, can I get something out of this project? No, that should not be your first consideration. You say, okay, this is opportunity. I'm gonna jump on it, I'm gonna work with whoever is interested in the project. You know, I contribute as much as I can. If the project is successful, that's a return. If not, no return. That's fine. So you're gonna have to sort of put that sort of return out of the picture first. And that's how you're gonna build the trust. The other thing is you're gonna have to find people have different personalities, right? If you find two people on earth, then there's a chance they cannot work together. You're gonna have to find somebody you can talk to, can show the common interest. So that's that's how you're gonna start. But the first, I think it's very important one that's willing to contribute and even to sacrifice some in some cases.

Uduak Edet: 19:48

Let's talk a bit about your students. I know you have graduated several students, PhD, masters, even summer students. And all this requires some level of guidance, mentorship. What would you consider the most important quality of an effective mentor?

Qiang Zhang: 20:06

Treat students as your colleagues and do not try to say, Oh, you're the student, you have to, I'm the supervisor, you have to listen to me. And no, you work together on a project. This is how I learned when I was a graduate student, because I worked with my advisor uh at Penn State, Dr. Puri, and he just started his career here at Penn State. I started my graduate study. So he treated me like a colleague. You know, we wrote a proposal together. So that's the way you should be treating your students. You work with them, don't ask them to work for you. You actually work with them or they work with you together to achieve the common goal. The other important thing is that you have to be positive to your students. Sometimes, you know, the student did uh wrote a paper, and you know, it's not up to your standards. You can sort of tell students there's things to be improved, not to get upset. You say, oh no, this is not good. Because training students, they got the potential there. You have to treat them equally as your colleagues, you know, whatever it needs you go to tell them. The other thing that sometimes challenging is timelines. Some students actually believe that cannot meet the deadlines. You're gonna have to sometimes you have to be firm. This has to be done by the state. Spending time on student work is very important. It's very time consuming if you review a thesis. You have to be very patient. They go through uh once, twice, three times, or four times, sometimes five times, to be very patient with students in terms of reviewing their work. It's not like you review in peer-reviewed paper, and you said, Okay, this is not good. You put the comments there, so rewrite. So for your students, I guess you have to sort of go step by step. Say, hey, how about this? And this could be a different approach or different discussion of a view on this. Because to them, it's a learning process. That's you're gonna have to understand. They are at a different level as you are, as a faculty member. You've gone through the graduate programs, you've been doing research, you wrote so many papers, can see it, but students probably couldn't. But you have to point out the right direction and bring them up to the level they can see things as you see.

Uduak Edet: 22:01

You know, with what you're saying, like it takes a lot of time, and you're also working with deadlines. How do you balance this demand for research, teaching, mentorship, and administration? How do you balance everything together?

Qiang Zhang: 22:15

Well, when you teach, if you teach two or three courses and then uh you do all your research on weekends or nights, it's always a challenge for uh faculty members. You're not easy to balance. One of the things I learned is I don't take too many graduate students. So my number normally I put up limits for five or six. So I feel more comfortable if I actually take in three students, like on average. Uh so then I can spend a lot more time. Uh, I don't want to take more students, uh, then and then I cannot spend quality time with them to review their work, to give them the right guidance. So that's sort of one of the philosophy I have followed. I try to limit the students probably five, six, you know, at a given time. That's sort of the maximum. Uh I don't want to have a dozen or twenty students, then I can't review the work. That's one thing I want to actually limit because I know the limit. Once you for teaching part, once you have done a course a few times, then it does not really require a lot of time. The research I used to go to the office every weekend and uh try to try to catch up with research.

Uduak Edet: 23:15

Let's talk a bit about teaching aspects. What has been the most rewarding parts of teaching at the University of Manitoba?

Qiang Zhang: 23:23

I actually get excited when I go to the classroom. I like students' expression when you tell them why something happened like this, then this is the theory, they're not, or evaluation of your class, they put some positive comments there. That's very rewarding to me. For graduate uh teaching, then that if you actually can convince somebody, or through your teaching, not purposely, you teach a course and somebody learns something, then suddenly it's like, oh, I want to dig into this thing, I want to do more research in this area. That's very rewarding too. That tells you something that's valuable to them. They picked up valuable stuff in your class. I think that's very important. I'm more looking at the outcome, how students actually what they learned and how they will be using it. And especially when students come back five, ten years after graduation. So I was working on this project. I actually try to find your class node and try to pick up that information. I thought, oh, that's good. At least there's one piece of information that's useful, you still remember.

Uduak Edet: 24:16

That's interesting. With that being said, what teaching method have you found most effective in engaging students in biosystem engineering?

Qiang Zhang: 24:26

It depends on the type of courses you teach. When I teach a second-year course or even third year, what I normally do is try to integrate the course content with some practical examples, like something happened in daily life. If you make that connection, then the students can actually follow you. Especially some courses are very theoretical. Like when I teach solid mechanics, one of the most difficult courses, undergrad students, sort of connect the complicated theory to some real life examples to do some demonstration, if I could, show and tell with a little thing. You know, when I was talking about the torque and then also use the screwdriver as an example, how do you change your window tires when you have to meet a certain torque requirement? You know, those are the things that they can relate, the forces. What is it? I sort of give them the real life example. It gets better when you actually move to the third year with the lab. When I actually start teaching uh mechanics course in the third year, I developed a new set of labs. Even sometimes I even ask a student when we test a piece of material to look in at the mechanical property. I said, Well, if you have something you're interested in, some material which didn't even cover in the class, if you want to test it, see how how strong the material is, now bring it here. I guess one year the students actually bought quite a few bones from the farm, hunting results, I guess. She bought it bones and said, let's try the question, see how much force we actually needed. Talking about the strength of the bone. And we do the lab and then said, Yeah, test that. Teaching theory, it's boring, it's challenging actually to the second or third year student. But if you have sort of relate this one to some real life examples and also to what they took previously, like in statics, and I was how that connects. And then I also try to tell them why you're taking this course, how where it's going to be used in the future. That's through some real examples too. So making the connections, integration, it's critical.

Uduak Edet: 26:13

Generally, what has been your most memorable moment working at the University of Manitoba?

Qiang Zhang: 26:19

Oh, every minute. Not really, especially because I think all the stuff I'm doing since I started here, it's all interesting. I don't have any the big moment in my career here. I don't have, I don't know, something like build uh a billion-dollar facility on campus that's rememorable. I I was involved in a few large projects, but I said that this is just part of my research. I do it every day. So that's what I'm saying. Every minute or every day, at least it's memorable in my 36 years of career at the UFM.

Uduak Edet: 26:48

So, what advice do you have for young researchers in the department? People who are just starting their own career, what advice do you have for them, whether it's in terms of research, teaching, or administrative work?

Qiang Zhang: 27:00

Well, I've uh talked a little bit about research, the long-term planning, and to look at the need of the industry because you know, our profession, our department is that's applied science to agriculture or biological systems. So you have to look at the needs of the industry to be open-minded, willing to talk to people, to develop the collaborative research programs with other researchers on campus or even outside of the university. Um, yeah, everybody works hard. I don't have to give them that advice. Everybody try to publish more papers. So that they they all know that. I think just looking at the long term, don't get buried in publishing papers. And sometimes you have to sit down to think about the future, to write down some notes, say, hey, this is what I want to do in 5, 10, 20 years from now. And thinking about what expert you're gonna become, would they call you or somebody else? The teaching part actually, it's it's very difficult to give advice because everybody's got different teaching style, but connecting with students and integrating the course content with other courses and also with the practical application, especially you know, if you teach up-year design courses, if you use your research experience and to sort of give students opportunity to look at the real world, do that for my air pollution control, of course. So I give them older projects I did dust control, then they always get that as design project.

Uduak Edet: 28:18

In terms of students, what advice would you give who actually have been set back in their research on how to handle failures as well?

Qiang Zhang: 28:26

Failure is inevitable. You always have a little failure, but as long as overall progress is upwards, you complete everything, it should not be issues there. People always learn from failure. But from students' point of view, they have to understand why they're doing it. If they just want to do it for degrees, probably not worth it. If they want to do that should for their own interest, they want to pursue something. Well, that's the real reason for going to graduate study. Uh, maybe we actually separate this. I'm talking about the graduate students now. Uh, because undergrad, it's more we're talking about the teaching. And for graduate students, yeah, whatever the project you're working on has to be something they are interested in. So there are some cases you have an ongoing project, a student sort of joined your team, say, I want to do something in a slightly different area. Well, to me, if I don't have funding to support the student in that area, I always tell them you have two options. You're gonna be working in the existing direction with me, then you can get funding, get assistantship. Or you if you want to work in on a project, you select it by yourself. There won't be financial support. But I also want to tell them, I said, Oh, this is actually a real example that happened during my career. And the students say, I want to do this. I said, Oh, uh no, I don't have funding for this. But if you do this, this is the connection between the project. Eventually, you're gonna learn the same principles and you're gonna learn the same approach. It's probably just application, it's different. So then you think about it, you can make the final decision. Students actually are pretty pretty happy, and he he can now see the connection between his original thinking and the project he's working on right now.

Uduak Edet: 29:53

Thank you so much. With all you have done, put in the university, outside the university, and global. Bali, what legacy do you hope your research and teaching would leave?

Qiang Zhang: 30:05

I don't want to leave any legacy. Everybody contributes a little to the knowledge and uh the development of the technology. I'm just a little tiny piece there. Whatever I contributed, if people could use it, great. I actually I didn't even realize yesterday I met with a person who's doing some work actually on disinfecting barns. And I don't know how she actually finds some papers I published earlier. Then she called, how about if we do this? You know, this is the things you never know. I don't have a particular thing. I I don't break in contribution uh to the science or to the technology, but I made my little contribution to the industry and to the research, to the knowledge. That's the way I want to be remembered. Or not remembered at all.

Uduak Edet: 30:47

Thank you so much. So, what do you look forward to doing after retirement?

Qiang Zhang: 30:52

I don't have a plan. That's probably the best plan. I will be for the next few years. I still got a graduate students to complete, so I'll be staying active in doing uh research. Sort of agreed to give some guest lectures in December. So I'll be here for a bit. Bigger plan probably is to get more involved with international collaboration. I probably will be being part of the big projects, but not needing anything. Retired professor. I can give advices and other people can do the job.

Uduak Edet: 31:19

Yes.

Qiang Zhang: 31:20

Yeah, I don't want a sort of PI of a project. So that's if that's before retirement.

Uduak Edet: 31:25

So is there anything you would like to say to the department of biosystems before you retire?

Qiang Zhang: 31:30

Not really. The departments do so well. It's got the right direction, it's got night right compositions of expertise. Keep doing the good thing in the future. If there's opportunity, hire good people in the good in the promising areas. I like this uh department because the whole environment is just it's like family. So everybody works together and talk to each other. That's how the department should be operated. Keep up that good tradition.

Uduak Edet: 31:54

Thank you so much, Dr. Chang, for your for generously sharing your time, insights, and incredible journey with us. It has been a true honor speaking with you. As you transition into retirement, your enduring influence will be reflected in the generations of students you have guided, the colleagues and community you have inspired, and the lasting contribution you have made to agricultural engineering and education.

Qiang Zhang: 32:17

Well, thank you, Odek. It's been a pleasure talking to you. And it's been a pleasure working with you in the past, too.

Uduak Edet: 32:22

Thank you. Thank you so much. And thank you all for listening. And please stay tuned for more upcoming podcasts on the University of Manitoba's resources for agricultural engineering, your gateway to discovering latest innovations, research, and practical solutions in agricultural engineering. Thank you.