Plants, fungi and microbial communities sense, signal and coordinate across environments. Flowers, for example, let bees know when they’re ready for pollination. Tomatoes emit gas signatures when a pathogen is detected. Certain crops can even warn their neighbors of incoming pests. 

At an interdisciplinary meeting held May 5-6 at NC State University, researchers from several different departments joined with invited guests from near and far to discuss how living systems sense, respond and communicate. 

More specifically, experts in everything from electrical engineering to ecology gathered to share how cutting-edge technology in biosensing, data science, imaging, signal processing and related areas can allow us to better observe natural processes — and, in turn, how we can translate biological principles into practical concepts for next-generation telecommunications and data management systems inspired by living organisms.

The 2026 Green-G Conference was chaired by professor Michael Daniele, who has dual appointments in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) and UNC-Chapel Hill and NC State’s Lampe Joint Department of Biomedical Engineering. Daniele is also the co-director of NC State’s ASSIST Center and Institute for Connected Sensor Systems (IConS). 

Daniele’s fellow co-director at ASSIST and IConS, Alper Bozkurt, the McPherson Family Distinguished Professor in Engineering Entrepreneurship in the ECE department, also helped organize and emcee the event. 

Day one of the conference was held at Hunt Library in the Duke Energy Hall, while day two was spent at the NC State Plant Sciences Building — headquarters of the N.C. Plant Sciences Initiative (PSI).

Speakers included (listed in order of appearance):

• Scott Walper, Science Director, U.S. Office of Naval Research
• Yu Jiang, Assistant Professor of Integrative Plant Science, Cornell University
• Seth Murray, Professor and Eugene Butler Endowed Chair of Soil & Crop Sciences, Texas A&M University
• Cranos Williams, Goodnight Distinguished Professor of Agricultural Analytics, NC State
• Zach Hetzler, CEO, Verdia Diagnostics
• James Yates, Group Leader, Instituto de Tecnologia Química e Biológica António Xavier at Universidade NOVA de Lisboa
• Mike Kudenov, Amein Family Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, NC State
• Acer VanWallendael, Assistant Professor of Horticultural Science, NC State
• Larry Yorke, Plant and Soil Ecophysiologist, Oak Ridge National Lab
• Antariksh Parichha, CEO, Serendipity Space
• Ross Sozzani, Professor of Plant and Microbial Biology, NC State
• Suresh Venkatesh, Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, NC State
• Carlos Moreira, Scientist, Instituto de Tecnologia Química e Biológica António Xavier at Universidade NOVA de Lisboa
• Edgar Lobaton, Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, NC State
• Melinda Knuth, Professor of Horticultural Science, NC State
• Lauren Maynard, Interdisciplinary Research Project Coordinator, NC State
• Cristina Silva Pereira, Associate Professor, Instituto de Tecnologia Química e Biológica António Xavier at Universidade NOVA de Lisboa

On day two of the conference, attendees got the opportunity to take a guided tour of the five-story Plant Sciences Building — a state-of-the-art, 185,000-square-foot facility positioned in the heart of NC State’s Centennial Campus.

How Green-G Has Grown

Green-G didn’t originally begin as an annual conference. 

“The original motivation was to move beyond conventional wireless and data infrastructure by asking whether biological communication networks could inspire new engineered systems,” Daniele says.

He says Green-G was founded to turn a “deliberately disruptive idea” into a real interdisciplinary research community — using plant, fungal and microbial signaling as inspiration for future bio-based telecommunications, information management, sensing, networking and living-system interfaces. But Daniele didn’t do it all on his own. 

Daniele credits Cristina Silva Pereira and Carlos Moreira, a professor and postdoctoral researcher, respectively, at Portugal’s Instituto de Tecnologia Química e Biológica António Xavier at Universidade NOVA de Lisboa (ITQB NOVA); Tom Chatfield, an author, broadcaster and philosopher based in London, England; and Antariksh Parichha, an entrepreneur and engineer based in Munich, Germany, as co-founders who helped to develop the idea.

It was in 2023 that the concept behind Green-G was officially born. 

At the Serendipity Collective’s inaugural pitching event in Berlin, Germany, Daniele presented the idea to an expert panel of judges — which included representatives from the U.S. Office of Naval Research-Global, a sponsor of the event — and Green-G ended up as one of three winning concepts selected to receive $50,000 in grant funding. 

New Connections and Future Directions

This year marked the first time the Green-G conference was hosted by NC State — and the first time it was held in the United States. 

It was a little less than two years after winning grant funding from the Serendipity Collective, in April 2025, that the inaugural Green-G Conference was held — at ITQB NOVA, located just outside of Lisbon, Portugal. 

At this year’s conference in Raleigh, many NC State students in Daniele, Bozkurt and Cranos Williams’ respective labs got the chance to not only hear about cutting-edge, inherently interdisciplinary innovations — at the intersection of plant science and electrical engineering, as merely one example — but most of them got to present research of their own at lightning talks on day one, which led into a poster session on day two. 

Students from the undergraduate to Ph.D. level showed off what they’ve been working on. One student is leading a research project on how to better monitor the health of freshwater mussels — which serve as a natural sensor of sorts by showing signs that can indicate water quality and the overall health of their environment.

Another student is researching an AI-powered method to digitally count moth populations, while one of their peers is studying similar ways to track nematodes. Meanwhile, yet another student is working on ultra-thin, transparent electrodes that could one day be applied to a leaf like a stick-on, temporary tattoo to monitor plant health without interrupting photosynthesis. 

The 2026 Green-G conference and Co-Consciousness workshop was supported by ASSIST, the Burroughs Welcome Fund, the Gregg Museum of Art and Design, IConS, ITQB NOVA, the North Carolina Biotechnology Center, N.C. PSI, NC-VVIRAL, the Office of Naval Research-Global, the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command (DEVCOM), Serendipity Collective and SPRIN-D.

Daniele says the current plan is to return to Portugal for next year’s Green-G conference. For more information, please email mdaniel6@ncsu.edu.