To measure plant water levels continuously, every plant has to be equipped with its own personal water sensor — and that’s exactly what the Cornell team went for. Lakso and Abraham Stroock, associate professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering, as well as Vinay Pagay, a Ph.D student at the time, created an electronic microchip water sensor that can be inserted right into the plant. In building the chip, they used the plants’ very own architecture for water management, basing the design on plant physiology.