Dr. Mehari Tekeste's areas of research include: (1) Simulation of Machine Systems Interactions with Soil and Crop Materials in Off-Road Machinery: Soil and crop materials characterization; and development of simple in-situ tests for soil and crop dynamics and physical properties fit for material models in continuum and discontinue mechanics simulation tools such as Finite Element Method (FEM) and Discrete Element Method (DEM); and (2) Soil Sensors and Data Analytics for Precision Agriculture: Measurement of soil compaction to evaluate design and system optimization of tractive devices and precision inflation tire technologies effect on soil physical properties and crop yield; Development of tillage technologies for precision agriculture and associated multi-layer sensor data fusion algorithm development for decision support tools; Field and laboratory testing of soil dynamics interaction with agriculture and construction equipment for machine design and performance evaluation.