I am an ecologist with an emphasis in GIS and remote sensing analysis. As a child, I spent many hours running through forests and fields, exploring ponds and rivers. Questions and fun facts about the environment occupied my mind at all times. I even conducted rudimentary fields experiments, from testing the best design for catching field mice to raising monarch caterpillars to butterflies. My passion and curiosity of the outdoors began to drive my career. I am most interested with the hidden connections in the world, especially with habitat fragmentation. My fascination of hidden connections really grew to drive my career when I was introduced to GIS and began to learn the many different types of analysis that allowed me to see in new wavelengths. What was previously unseen was now visible to me, revealing even more connecting points.
During my undergraduate studies in Sociology and Anthropology, and positions after college, I began to realize the interconnectedness between humanities and the natural science. I believe that it is critical to consider the impact of impact of extensive footprint of human activity on the natural world. Many issues that may seem exclusively human, such as food scarcity, still have strong implications and connections to the environment. I incorporate this belief into my work in order to develop a well-rounded and sustainable research that benefits both the environment and humankind.
Mostly recently I’ve been focused on learning more about modeling and machine learning. I’ve created parcel connectivity models and have been studying methods of using machine learning to aid in training data classification. My interests have become specialized to birds and island ecology. The bird migration is very unique in that it can be some of the longest and and large scale migrations. I am curious to understand how these migrations patterns are changing with global climate change. It also emphasis the current global political climate regarding immigration. Island ecology is intriguing because islands act as predictors for climate change trends due to land limitations. Moving forward, my goal is combine my passions and experience to lead the exchange between the natural world and humanity to contribute to create a more sustainable world.