While pursuing my degree in Environmental Geography at the University of Hawaii, I also had the opportunity to work with the Coral Reef and Ecosystem Division at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). At NOAA I worked on analyzing spatial data and creating both benthic habitat and coral classification maps that were used in restoration efforts in the Hawaiian Islands.

After graduating I made the move to Washington State, where I currently work as a surveyor at an environmental consulting firm. I work on a variety of different projects, ranging anywhere from topographic maps, boundary work and AutoCAD drafting, all the way to UAV data analysis. I’m excited to join the Lecours Lab as a distance student and pursue my master’s degree in Geomatics while having the opportunity to weave in both ecological and environmental based topics.

My current job title is Civil Designer at a large multinational engineering firm. I live and work in South Florida. Currently I am doing roadway design and in the near term I would like to transition to using more of my previous career experience doing hydrologic and hydraulics simulation modeling, analysis and design. I am experienced in 3d modeling of proposed earthwork and, now, roadways. I am motivated to learn more about Geomatics and combine it with my professional experience in engineering.

In particular I have been very interested in using UAS to collect topographic data and aerial imagery. I actively participated in my wife’s company while we were living in Salvador, Brazil. The contracts were to document the progress of land development projects on a monthly basis with aerial photographs taken by UAS.

I’m hoping the Geomatics Master’s degree will help take my career in new and unexpected directions. I’m interested in a wide variety of topics such as water supply, water quality, environmental restoration and protection, crop/vegetation health, soil water content, topographic surveying, sea level rise, to name a few.

I am a PhD student and Research Scientist in the Geomatics Program at University of Florida and I am advised by Dr. Benjamin Wilkinson and Dr. Eben Broadbent. My doctoral research investigates establishing a reproducible methodology to georeference PhenoCam images towards advancing the precision to the second level taking it from Region of Interest (ROI) level to Pixel level. I take a multidisciplinary approach that encompasses the fields of photogrammetry, ecology, lidar, and conventional surveying techniques and theories.

I am involved in the ASPRS Student Advisory Council and recently became Deputy Communication Councilor. I hold a master’s degree in Computer Information Science and Engineering (CISE) from the University of Florida, that investigated cost effective indoor positioning systems for smart spaces. Previously, I worked at Geospatial Consultancy Company that is an ESRI partner in Dubai focusing on integrating innovative geospatial applications and empowering senior executives at the governmental entities with easy to use geospatial decision-making tools.

I am a Master student and research assistant in Marine Geomatics Lab. During my undergraduate studies, I focused on remote sensing using unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), particularly with applications in agriculture. I performed geospatial data collection for several projects related to crop monitoring, and worked in the State Laboratory of Intelligent Agriculture where I was the leader of the UAV team.

I have over ten years of experience building and flying drones. While studying exchange year at UF in the Geomatics program, I became interested in the diversity of the marine and coastal environment because of a term project in the UAS Mapping course for which I had to quantify and monitor the shoreline change of Seahorse Key. During my master’s degree, I will be working on improving bathymetric retrieval accuracy using optical data and coastal change monitoring.

I am currently enrolled in the Ph.D. program in Geospatial Analysis at the Florida Research and Education Center in Davie Florida. My current research uses crowd-sourced data from fitness tracker apps to assess characteristics of the built and natural environments that influence cyclists route, choice or app choice and to compare routes used by cyclists with those suggested by routing engines. In addition, these data are being used to assess what characteristics of Florida State Parks and their surrounding areas attract users for various physical activities. I currently have three papers under review in three separate journals.

In addition to my GIS research I have co-authored a mathematics text book and teach mathematics at Broward College in Davie Florida. I hope to finish my dissertation and successfully defend it sometime in 2021.

I am a PhD student who in the last one year has been exploring unorthodox sources of geospatial data such as social media applications, evaluating their quality, and using them to conduct spatio-temporal analysis. My first paper (https://doi.org/10.5194/agile-giss-1-19-2020) tracked how Hurricane Dorian (2019) was captured on GDELT (a news repository for worldwide events) and Twitter. The overarching aim of my research is to explore and present alternative sources of geospatial data by examining their quality. I look forward to developing better geospatial data quality management products.

I’m an amateur art enthusiast and I enjoy spending time communing with nature.