By day, Adam Wade is finding better ways to identify wood species using artificial intelligence as a sustainable bioproducts doctoral student. At night, he鈥檚 crafting a custom guitar out of poplar and maple.
鈥淭he guitar design I鈥檓 working on replicates a Fender Stratocaster. I鈥檓 making everything from scratch using rough-sawn lumber. The guitar鈥檚 body is made of poplar with a soft maple top. The neck and fretboard are hard maple. I'm using poplar and maple because they are lightweight and considered good tone woods, known to carry sound waves better than other species,鈥 Wade said.
Understanding the anatomy of wood is central to both Wade鈥檚 woodworking hobby and his MSU doctoral research. He wants to make a difference in the wood products industry while also learning more about the material to become a better woodworker.
Wade鈥檚 doctoral project, under the direction of Assistant Professor Frank Owens, aims to improve machine learning and artificial intelligence capabilities in the field of wood identification to help combat illegal logging.
鈥淚鈥檓 training and testing models for the Xylotron device, developed by scientists at the USDA Forest Service鈥檚 Forest Products Laboratory. The Xylotron uses computer vision and artificial intelligence to accurately identify wood specimens,鈥 Wade said.
He said most wood identification currently is done by a manual process.
鈥淩ight now, someone trained in wood anatomy must identify imported wood species with a hand lens, and that鈥檚 subject to human error, how well they鈥檝e been trained, and how they interpret the data,鈥 Wade said.
He hopes his research will make the process easier and faster.
鈥淚deally, this system will allow you to train someone who knows nothing about wood anatomy in a short period of time to accurately and rapidly identify a wood specimen,鈥 he said.
The Scooba native grew up with the woods as his backyard and he always had a career in forestry or wood products in mind. It wasn鈥檛 until 2016 at age 36, however, that he saw the chance to finally take the leap.
鈥淚 have two kids, so returning to school was always daunting,鈥 Wade said. 鈥淲hen the electric supply warehouse where I worked downsized and I was laid off, I knew I had to start over somewhere. I figured it was a good time to go back to school,鈥 he said.
He attended East Mississippi Community College to work toward an associate degree in forestry.
鈥淲hen I arrived at EMCC, I fell in love with forestry and the management of trees. My instructors there told me about MSU and the bachelor鈥檚 degree in forestry here. I made up my mind to go for it,鈥 Wade said.
After transferring to MSU, he completed his bachelor鈥檚 degree in forestry in May 2020. In June, he began work as a graduate student in the Department of Sustainable Bioproducts. He said two consecutive summers in the forestry summer field program鈥攆irst聽 as a student and then as a teaching assistant鈥攁ffirmed his love of the field, while an undergraduate research project and wood anatomy class ignited his desire to pursue graduate school.
鈥淕oing through the forestry program, especially the summer field program, gave me a greater respect for forestry and inspired me to continue on because I had more questions I wanted to answer. On the wood products side, I鈥檓 fascinated about learning about different species, the different cells, their functions and locations, and how all of that affects how you manipulate wood to make a certain product,鈥 Wade said.