By Adewale Kupoluyi
Prof. Olusegun Folorunso of the Department of Computer Science, Federal University of Agriculture, Abeokuta (FUNAAB), Ogun State, Nigeria, has been appointed as Chairman, Technical Board of FarmingFarmersFarms, an online newspaper that focuses on agriculture, environment, and entrepreneurship. Technical board members are saddled with the responsibility of ensuring that the publication is of high standards, raise funds for operations and expansion, and develop comprehensive editorial policy for the newspaper, among others.
FarmingFarmersFarms is a young online newspaper, published by Media and Educational Consult, Ibadan, Oyo State, Nigeria. The motto is … to empower and live well. The vision is, to make life worthy of living for all while the mission is, to use agricultural journalism to empower and make life worthy of living for all in a legally and environmentally-friendly society. The newspaper’s core values are Editorial Independence, Fairness, and Integrity.
Other technical board members are Pastor (Dr.) Emmanuel Ajayi (Finance), Dr. Olatunde Oderinwale (Agricultural Reporting), Barr. Kelly Ogbe (Legal), Dr. Adewale Kupoluyi (Editor-in-Chief), and Ms. Juliet Egwuonwu (Operations/Secretary to Technical Board). According to FFF, the appointments were based on their pedigree and track records of achievements, as sound professionals.
Prof. Folorunso’s research areas include artificial intelligence, machine learning databases and information systems, software engineering, and quality assurance in higher education. He bagged a PhD (Computer Science) from the University of Agriculture, Abeokuta and MSc (Computer Science) from the University of Lagos, Nigeria, and has close to 30 years of experience in teaching, research, and consultancy, and community engagement. The Chairman has participated, either as team leader or member, in a number of funded-research and consultancy works relevant to information and communication technology and agriculture, by playing crucial roles in curriculum development, conceptualisation and design of research projects for the World Bank, European Union, and Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund), Nigeria.
Between 2012 and 2013, Prof. Folorunso led the team that made his university (FUNAAB), ranked 2nd Best University in Nigeria (twice) in the ‘Webometrics Ranking of World Universities’. He also contributed to the development of the proposal that won research grant for the establishment of the World Bank African Centre of Excellence in Agricultural Development and Sustainable Environment (CEADESE); was Pioneer Director, Centre for Innovation and Strategy in Learning and Teaching (CISLT) at FUNAAB; and Co-Investigator to the TETFund grant on the development of ‘Early Warning System (EWS) for Farmers Preparedness Against Climate Change Impacts in SouthWest, Nigeria’ and a host of other landmark initiatives. The don is currently the Principal Investigator for the European Union-sponsored grant on ‘Digital Soil Mapping for Optimal Agricultural Yield and Sustainable Soil Biodiversity Management in Southwest, Nigeria Using Artificial Intelligence’.
A Google Scholar, Prof. Folorunso, who is widely-travelled, has supervised many students at the undergraduate and postgraduate levels, published extensively on a wide variety of subjects relating to the conception, theory and analysis of databases and information systems, including knowledge management system, artificial intelligence and software engineering. The Professor has visited the Ball State University, Muncie, United States as a research scholar, sponsored by the United Nations University Institute of Software Technology, Macau; was participant at the IREG-5 international conference in Berlin, Germany on ‘The Academic Rankings from Popularity to Reliability’; and Adjunct Professor to the Centre d’Excellence Regional Sur les Sciences Aviaires (CERSA), Universite De Lome, Togo, to mention a few.
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