Dr. Chi N. Thai is an Associate Professor at the College of Engineering of the University of Georgia where he lectures undergraduate and graduate courses on Systems Modeling, Multispectral Machine Vision and Robotics. His formal training includes B.S. in Mechanical Engineering and M.S. in Aerospace Engineering, both at Northrop University.

He obtained his Ph.D. in Agricultural Engineering from the University of California at Davis. He had done research in adaptive gear shifting for agricultural tractors, optimal hull design for boat tractors, characterization and modeling of quality of agricultural products using spectrometry and hyperspectral imaging. In recent years, he expanded his research and teaching interests into developing embedded plant health sensing packages for land- and air-based autonomous robotic systems and also in applying robotics to STEM teaching and learning at all age levels.