Lecturer
Department of Department of Engineering Fundamentals
Contact Information
- E-mail: knelms3@vols.utk.edu
- Member, ASABE (Past-Chair of Membership Development Council)
- Member, Tau Beta Pi (The Engineering Honor Society)
- Member, Gamma Sigma Delta (Honor Society of Agriculture)
- 2025 TCE Best Graduate Teaching Assistant
- 2024 (Spring), EF Outstanding Graduate Teaching Assistant
- 2023 UTK GSD Master’s Student Award
Biography
McKensie Nelms earned her bachelor’s degree in Biosystems Engineering, with a minor in Computer Science, from the University of Tennessee in 2020, and her master’s degree in Biosystems Engineering from the University of Tennessee in 2023. She is currently working on her PhD in Biosystems Engineering at the University of Tennessee. Her dissertation research includes the exploration of mechanical pollination methods, as well as the development of a vision system, for an autonomous pollination robot, focused on the detection and three-dimensional localization of pollination ready flowers on tomato plants in controlled environment agriculture systems. In 2021, Nelms joined the Engineering Fundaments program at UTK as a graduate teaching assistant and served in that role for four years, before joining the program as a lecturer in 2025.
MS in Biosystems Engineering, UTK
Image processing and Computer Vision Techniques for Flower Detection and 3D Localization for Autonomous Pollination Applications
