Research

Dr. Kefauver is currently a Ramon y Cajal Research Fellow in Agriculture and Forestry and Professor of Plant Physiology at the University of Barcelona Faculty of Biology in Barcelona, Spain. His current research and teaching interests are plant ecophysiology, climate change, agriculture, and forestry, including imaging spectroscopy, multispectral and thermal remote sensing, and GIS applications for multi-scale scientific research on these topics. Besides essential basic research in plant ecophysiology, Dr. Kefauver’s current lines of research aim to give new direction to precision agroforestry and scalable high throughput plant phenotyping for improving environmental sustainability and food security related to global climate change. Dr Kefauver’s innovative research pushes beyond the state-of-the-art as well as advancing the efficacy of low-cost alternatives and open-source software for providing tangible improvements in developing countries through applied scientific advancements.

Dr. Kefauver’s recent projects as PI and team member include international and national projects funded by the European Commission COST program, United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization (UN FAO), CGIAR (Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research), CIMMYT (International Center for the Improvement of Wheat and Maize), the CTFC (Forest Sciences Centre of Catalonia), Agrotecnio CERCA Research Center, and at the Government of Spain Ministry of Science and Innovation on the topics of Durum Wheat Phenotyping and Mediterranean Forest Genetics with two national projects as a Team Member, four Spanish national projects as a Scientific Team Member, and as Co-PI in one RETOS coordinated national project. Within the Integrative Crop Ecophysiology – EcoCrops Consolidated Research Group, Dr. Kefauver is the research lead on multiple national and international research projects leading lines of research related to the technological advancements in satellite, UAV and proximal image analysis for plant phenotyping and precision agriculture, informatics specialist, programmer, web developer, and PC, cloud-based and mobile software development expert; he is also an EU licensed UAV pilot.

As a Professor, Dr. Kefauver has taught accredited university courses in the USA at the University of California, Davis (2006-2009) in Environmental Remote Sensing and Photogrammetry and GIS and Evapotranspiration Remote Sensing in the NASA Student Airborne Research Program (2009-2011). He currently teaches Plant Physiology, Environmental Plant Physiology, and Phenotyping and Precision Agriculture in English, Catalan and Spanish at the University of Barcelona, Spain. Additionally, he has organized training programs in the United States, Spain, Peru, Kenya, Turkey, Italy, Tunisia, Finland, Chile, and Colombia. Dr. Kefauver has hosted 8 international exchange students and professors and has tutored or directed 5 senior thesis projects in Spain, Australia, and Colombia, 8 master’s and 4 PhD students, and is currently directing one MS and two PhD students in Spain. He will launch in 2025 and 2026 the Erasmus+ Blended Intensive Program (BIP) on Environmental Remote Sensing as an internationally recognized undergraduate course in Environmental Sciences at the University of Barcelona Faculty of Biology.

Dr. Kefauver’s national and international recognition extends as Associate Editor Plant Phenomics SPJ AAAS, Associate Editor in Technical Advances at Frontiers in Plant Science, and previously as Academic and Forestry Remote Sensing Editor for Remote Sensing, where he edited over 50 Q1 scientific papers from 2019-2024. Dr. Kefauver is also a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), and a Senior member of the IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society, where he is currently IEEE GRSS Liaison to the IEEE Society for the Social Implications of Technology (SSIT) and associate member on the IEEE SSIT Board of Governors and was previously Chair of the (GRSS) Inspire, Develop, Empower, and Advance (IDEA) Committee. Dr. Kefauver is currently Chair of the EU COST (Cooperation in Science and Technology) Action CA22136 – Pan-European Network of Green Deal Agriculture and Forestry Earth Observation Science (PANGEOS), which will organize conferences, workshops and training schools and support international research collaborations from 2024 to 2027. He is also Coordinator for Phenotyping in the Spanish National Research Council CSIC Thematic Network Conexion Trigo, and Agrotecnio representative in the Xarxa4AgriTech Catalan network for science transferability.

Scientific Productivity Metrics, September 2025.
Dr. Kefauver’s research has been cited >4814 times, he has an H-index 32, i10 index 54 at Google Scholar, and he has indexed 101 documents and 7 preprints with 244 co-authors, an H-index of 28 with >3418 citations by 2776 documents in SCOPUS. In the Web of Science database, 106 total documents with 99 scientific publications with an H-index of 28 with 23% as First Author, 32% as Last Author, 35% as Corresponding Author (02/04/2024). Over 90% are at least first quartile (Q1). WOS also notes 47 verified peer review records though of course I have reviewed many more. Dr. Kefauver volunteers on the Editorial Board in four different Q1 journals, SPJ Plant Phenomics, Remote Sensing MDPI, Frontiers in Plant Science, and Information Processing in Agriculture, The Journal of the China Agricultural University.