From the ground up: St. Louis startup HabiTerre is offering agricultural solutions to climate challenges

Kaiyu Guan’s first name, given to him by his grandfather, means “explore and discover the universe.” Today, he’s fulfilling his grandfather’s aspiration via geospatial technology. “I’m using satellites as my eyes to see the universe,” he says.

He holds numerous titles, including Blue-Waters professor in Supercomputing at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and chief scientist for the NASA Acres program. In 2019, he broke new ground by founding the ag-tech and geospatial startup…