Each of the following has agreed to serve as a reference. Please contact me before reaching out to them; for brief queries, their direct contact details are listed below.

Internship supervisor · Auburn 2025

Dr. Desmond R. Layne

Head & Professor, Department of Horticulture

Auburn University · Alabama, USA

Supervised my Fall 2025 research internship on integrated aquaponic systems coupling tilapia production with greenhouse tomato cultivation. Witnessed my bench work on water-quality datasets and biometric monitoring pipelines.

drl0021@auburn.edu

Graduation thesis supervisor

Dr. Víctor Hugo Morales Peña

Professor of Tropical Forestry · Director, Geomatics Center

EARTH University · Costa Rica

Co-author and supervisor of my graduation thesis on knowledge-distilled vision transformers for ordinal severity grading of coffee leaf disease. Ph.D. in Agricultural Sciences (Universidad de Costa Rica). Holds the longest-running view of my computational research practice.

vmorales@earth.ac.cr

Aquaponics research coordinator

Mollie R. Smith

Outreach Programs Coordinator · Aquaponics Research

E.W. Shell Fisheries Center, Auburn University · USA

Day-to-day coordinator of my Auburn internship, observed my data-pipeline work, biometric monitoring contributions, and integration into a multidisciplinary team of fisheries scientists and plant biologists.

mrs0018@auburn.edu +1 334 707 5699

Senior reference · public service

Dr. Luis Felipe Arauz Cavallini

Former Minister of Agriculture & Livestock of Costa Rica · Plant Pathology Professor

Universidad de Costa Rica (UCR) · Costa Rica

Former Dean of UCR's Faculty of Agricultural and Food Sciences and head of Costa Rica's Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock (2014–2018). Ph.D. in Plant Pathology (NC State, 1990). Senior endorser with national-policy perspective on tropical-agriculture research and food security.

luis.arauz@ucr.ac.cr