John F. Reid

Agricultural Engineering
Class of 1982, M.S.

Agricultural Engineering
Class of 1980, B.S.

John F. Reid discovered agricultural engineering as a discipline of study in a course catalog in the public library when he was in the seventh grade. “From that point, my decision was made,” Reid said. After graduating with his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in agricultural engineering, Reid joined the agricultural engineering faculty at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, researching machine vision in the context of agricultural and biological applications. 

Reid transitioned to a role at John Deere in 2001 as a principal scientist and engineer, and in 2006 became the company’s director of enterprise product innovation and technology. He now serves as vice president of enterprise technologies at the Brunswick Corp. He’s passionate about the work of the Santa Fe Institute, Institute for the Future, and the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers (ASABE). Reid is a member of the National Academy of Engineering. He has served on the board of directors of international organizations, including the Industrial Research Institute, Fraunhofer Institute, ASABE Foundation, and ASAE.