AMHERST — A UMass professor will be giving new life to old tech, repurposing outdated smartphones to study the environment with the help of a $600,000 grant from the U.S. National Science Foundation.

Dr. V.P. Nguyen, an assistant professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst’s Manning College of Information and Computer Sciences, will use the discarded devices to monitor plant water consumption and nutrient density in soil.

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