Bruce Bugbee, Ph.D.

Field: Plants, Soils, and Climate
Areas of Focus: Plants Physiology, Space

Expertise

• Food in space
• LEDs for crops
• Crop physiology
• Cannabis production and CBD
• Space exploration
• Plant growth chambers
• Controlled environment crops
• Plant science implementation

Bio

Dr. Bruce Bugbee is the Director of the Crop Physiology Laboratory at Utah State University in the Department of Plants, Soils & Climate. He is also the President of Apogee Instruments, creators of scientific instrumentation for plant, water, and climate science. He was named a Fellow of the American Society of Agronomy in 2018 and a Fellow of the American Society for Horticultural Science in 2020. Bugbee has given TEDx Talks on his work and is a recipient of the Utah Governor’s Medal for Science and Technology and the D. Wynn Thorne Research Lifetime Achievement award.

Dr. Bugbee has focused his study of hydroponics partially on use for long-term space missions. In his work on developing crop sustainability for long-term space exploration, Bugbee additionally focuses on nutritional needs for space explorers, determining how many different crops would be needed to sustain life. He was part of the team of scientists and engineers that developed the means to grow crops aboard the International Space Station.

Dr. Bugbee is a member of the NASA-funded Center for the Utilization of Biological Engineering in Space (https://cubes.space/about).

He is the author or co-author of more than 350 peer-reviewed journal articles and several articles for popular press on food production for space exploration, and 11 books or chapters.

Always interested in technologies to help achieve his research goals, Dr. Bugbee often created his own sensors and other scientific instruments in his lab and at home at his kitchen table. In 1996, he founded Apogee Instruments, Inc., which designs, builds, and markets sensors and other instruments for environmental, agricultural, and renewable energy applications worldwide.