EMILI is working with TerraWave Radar Solutions during the 2025 growing season to validate its grain inventory management technology.
TerraWave is a hardware development company specializing in radars, sustainability, and agriculture. CEO Mohammad Asefi and Chief Technology Officer Hannah Fogel approached EMILI about collaborating on a project after Asefi attended EMILI’s annual Agriculture Enlightened conference in 2024.
Both Fogel and Asefi are electrical engineers. They met while researching medical imaging techniques in the University of Manitoba’s Electromagnetic Imaging Lab (EIL). At the time Asefi was a postdoctoral fellow and Fogel was completing her Master’s. When one of their professors suggested they adapt the EIL’s technology into grain imaging technology, the group shifted their focus onto agriculture; a venture that led to a successful commercialized technology. Nearly a decade later, in 2023, Asefi launched TerraWave, with Fogel joining the company soon after.
“We ultimately started TerraWave after learning more about agriculture and seeing that there were challenges that growers were facing that our technology could help solve,” said Fogel. “If we can provide better access to data to help with decision-making, that is really our goal.”
In early 2025 they visited Innovation Farms powered by AgExpert to run preliminary tests on an early-stage sensor prototype that uses electromagnetic waves to measure grain inventory. They were looking for insight into what data the sensor needed to collect in order to provide farmers with timely, accurate grain inventory metrics.
Since then, Asefi and Fogel have applied these learnings to a new iteration of the sensor that will undergo more rigorous testing during the 2025 growing season.
Mohammad Asefi and Hannah Fogel test TerraWave inventory management sensors at Innovation Farms in 2024. They will conduct more extensive testing in June 2025, Photo by Leanne Koroscil.
“We will test version two of our prototype starting in June,” said Fogel. “After collecting data over an extended period, we plan to make more revisions over the summer and then return in the fall with a product that is closer to being commercial-ready.”
Fogel says that the opportunity to work with EMILI on Innovation Farms allows TerraWave to speed up the development process.
“The chance to test our sensors on Innovation Farms means receiving and applying feedback is integrated into our product development, which is very beneficial for us. Without this support, it could take months, or even years of working on a product in a lab setting. And then, once in the field, realize there’s all these challenges that we weren’t prepared for.”
Learn more about TerraWave on EMILI’s website. For more insight into this and other activities, EMILI hosts field tours and demonstrations on Innovation Farms throughout the season to showcase new agricultural technologies, expand innovation opportunities, and increase understanding and adoption of digital tools.