Portrait
Trang V. Nguyen
PhD Student
University of Texas at Austin
About Me

Hi! I’m Trang (/tɹaŋ/), a second-year PhD student in the Ecology, Evolution and Behavior program at UT Austin, where I work with Dr. Phuong Dao—one of the greatest supervisors I’ve had.

(Let me try to explain my research without making it sound too complicated), I’m interested in using AI to better understand plants and how they respond to their environments. My current research explores whether vision-language models can distinguish between stress symptoms that look frustratingly similar in remote-sensing images of winter wheat. In other words, I’m teaching AI to become a better plant detective. 🌾🔍

My current CV (updated October 29, 2026):

Curriculum Vitae
Education
  • University of Texas at Austin
    University of Texas at Austin
    Department of Integrative Biology
    Ph.D. Student
    Jan. 2026 - present
  • Colorado State University
    Colorado State University
    Department of Agricultural Biology
    Ph.D. Student
    Jan. 2025 - transferred
  • Fulbright University Vietnam
    Fulbright University Vietnam
    BSc in Computer Science
    Minor: Integrated Sciences (Environmental Science Track)
    Aug. 2020 - Dec. 2024
Honors & Awards
(Selected) Academic Experience
  • University of Texas at Austin
    University of Texas at Austin
    Jan. 2026-Present
    Lab Manager | Graduate Research Assistant | Graduate Teaching Assistant
  • Colorado State University
    Colorado State University
    Jan. 2025-Dec. 2025
    Graduate Research Assistant | Graduate Teaching Assistant
    Teaching courses:
    • Plant & Civilization (Fall 2026)
  • Fulbright University Vietnam
    Fulbright University Vietnam
    Dec. 2021-Dec. 2024
    Undergraduate Research Assistant & Teaching Assistant
    Teaching courses:
    • Human Genomes & Genomics (Spring 2024)
    • Quantitative Reasoning in a Digital Age (Spring 2022)
    • Computational Social Media (Fall 2021)
News
2026
Grateful to have my work accepted for oral and poster presentations at AGU Annual Meeting 2026! Excited for San Francisco this December!
Oct 15
AIHACKS ’26, a STEM summer camp for high school students in Dak Lak, Vietnam, has successfully wrapped up its fourth year, with 90% of surveyed participants reporting that they felt inspired to continue exploring AI! I was proud to contribute as an academic advisor and website developer. Learn more
Aug 15
I submitted my first paper (lol)! Although it is not part of my dissertation, it was a wonderful project exploring how vision-language models can support plant disease diagnosis—and a genuine honor to collaborate on with Khang Nguyen Quoc, an incredibly talented computer scientist. The manuscript is currently under review at Scientific Data, and you can read the preprint here
Jun 16
Celebrating a small win: I received the Integrative Biology Graduate Travel Award to attend the AGU Annual Meeting this year!
Mar 22
Selected Publications (view all )
A multiregional image-text dataset and benchmark for vision-language modeling of plant diseases
A multiregional image-text dataset and benchmark for vision-language modeling of plant diseases

Trang V. Nguyen*#, Khang Nguyen Quoc*, David Harwath, Luyl-Da Quach, Phuong D. Dao# (* equal contribution, # corresponding author)

Under review. 2026

Plant disease datasets are often fragmented, dominated by controlled-environment imagery, and insufficient for developing transferable AI systems. Here, we present LeafMD, a multimodal resource combining LeafNet 2.0—255,855 image–text pairs spanning 37 crops, 197 crop–disease classes, and nine geographic regions—with LeafBench 2.0, a benchmark evaluating fine-grained pathological reasoning across nine tasks. Evaluation of 16 vision–language models reveals substantial gaps between disease recognition and symptom-level reasoning, highlighting LeafMD’s value for developing disease-aware agricultural foundation models.

[Dataset] [Preprint]

A multiregional image-text dataset and benchmark for vision-language modeling of plant diseases

Trang V. Nguyen*#, Khang Nguyen Quoc*, David Harwath, Luyl-Da Quach, Phuong D. Dao# (* equal contribution, # corresponding author)

Under review. 2026

Plant disease datasets are often fragmented, dominated by controlled-environment imagery, and insufficient for developing transferable AI systems. Here, we present LeafMD, a multimodal resource combining LeafNet 2.0—255,855 image–text pairs spanning 37 crops, 197 crop–disease classes, and nine geographic regions—with LeafBench 2.0, a benchmark evaluating fine-grained pathological reasoning across nine tasks. Evaluation of 16 vision–language models reveals substantial gaps between disease recognition and symptom-level reasoning, highlighting LeafMD’s value for developing disease-aware agricultural foundation models.

[Dataset] [Preprint]

All publications
Misc
  • The name “melanthera-biflora” comes from Melanthera biflora, the scientific name of the sea daisy. Daisy is my English name, while “sea” is a nod to hydrology—the field where my scientific journey began.
  • I adopted a cat to help with my anxiety, only to discover that he has anxiety too. Like cat, like owner.
  • I love matcha, Sephora, and starting new side projects before finishing the previous ones.