About Me
I was born and raised in Waxhaw, North Carolina and became interested in geography when my third grade teacher assigned a mapping project for all 50 states (thank you Mrs. Stuka!). After graduating from high school, I enrolled at Louisiana State University where I completed a Bachelor of Science degree in Physical Geography. While at LSU, I worked in the World Health Organization Collaborating Center (WHOCC) for GIS & Remote Sensing under Dr. Andrew Curtis. My undergraduate research comprised an eclectic array of projects and topics that included Yellow Fever mapping in New Orleans from the 1878 outbreak, mosquito monitoring in East Baton Rouge parish for West Nile virus, media and Red Cross database management for Hurricane Katrina response, anthrax database development for outbreaks in Kazakhstan, spatio-temporal trends of historic tropical cyclones in the North Atlantic basin, and map development for individual countries of the Middle East and North Africa for publication in a geopolitical book about the region. I was also fortunate enough to receive a National Science Foundation (NSF) Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) scholarship at the University of Southern Maine in the summer of 2007. The project involved kayaking to multiple islands along the coast to perform fault mapping and microtopography analysis using high precision GPS units. The REU confirmed my interest in spatial sciences as well as my aspirations to pursue a graduate degree in geography.
I graduated from LSU in the spring of 2008, then immediately began my master's degree at California State University, Fullerton with a focus in Medical Geography. I worked in the Spatial Epidemiology and Ecology Research (SEER) lab under Dr. Jason Blackburn and collaborated on multiple projects in the United States and Former Soviet Union (FSU) countries. My main area of research involved ecological niche and species distribution modeling with a focus on the spread of diseases. Additional projects focused on habitat management and conservation for endangered species. Halfway through my degree, Dr. Blackburn was offered a position in the Department of Geography at the University of Florida so I transferred to maintain my ongoing research and thesis topic and to provide continuity with projects in the SEER lab and specifically in the FSU. In the spring of 2010 I successfully defended my thesis and graduated from the University of Florida with a Master of Science degree in Geography. I continued to work for the SEER lab as a research assistant modeling the current and future distributions (based on the A2 and B2 climate change scenarios) of a tick species known to be a vector for Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever (CCHF) across the FSU.
During the latter part of my masters degree I became increasingly interested in climatology and disaster science and subsequently enrolled at LSU once again in the fall of 2010. I began an assistantship in the Disaster Science and Management Center working with Dr. Melanie Gall as a primary author on the LSU System Hazard Mitigation Plan. My main areas of contribution on the project encompassed hazard mapping and modeling as well as GIS database development and management. A few of the hazard models employed for the mitigation plan included economic loss models for floods and hurricanes as well as chemical release scenario models. In the summer of 2011 I also worked concurrently with Dr. Carol Friedland (Department of Construction Management and Industrial Engineering) and ImageCat, Inc. to estimate wind speed surfaces associated with multiple windstorms that occurred across Europe over the past three decades. The project was solicited by a reinsurance company to better understand damages and insurance losses incurred by the windstorms, which can be as powerful and destructive as hurricanes are in the United States. I employed a novel ordinary kriging approach to interpolate the observed wind speeds that accounted for anisotropic tendencies. This area of research rapidly developed into my dissertation topic and under the guidance of my advisor, Dr. Robert Rohli, I completed my dissertation proposal and general exams culminating in a successful proposal defense in March of 2012. I was awarded a Marshall Plan Fellowship for the summer of 2012 to study in Villach, Austria at the Carinthia University of Applied Sciences where I continued my research on European windstorms. I hope to soon expand into different regions in the United States also impacted by windstorms - the Pacific Northwest (i.e., 'winter storms') and the Northeast (i.e., Nor'easters). As a result of my research on European windstorms, I was able to successfully defend my dissertation in the spring of 2013 and graduated in May 2013.
I am currently an associate professor in the Department of Geosciences at East Tennessee State University in Johnson City, Tennessee. I teach Digital Mapping (Cartography), Spatial Statistics, GIS Projects, Advanced GIS, Campus Mapping, Hazard Mapping & Modeling, Habitat/Niche Modeling, Field Experience, and Geospatial Applications for Unmanned Aerial Systems. I am also the Director (2016-present) of the Geoinformatics & Disaster Science (GADS) Lab (which focuses on geospatial-based hazard mitigation plan development for various jurisdictional levels across the country) and the Graduate Coordinator (2017-present) for the GIS Certificate Program. I am also building the Tennessee Climate Office and serve as the acting State Climatologist. I currently advise or co-advise 21 graduate students (via thesis/dissertation research) and 14 undergraduate students (via advising, undergraduate honors thesis research, and independent studies). To find out more details about some of the projects I have worked on over the past several years go to the subheadings under the "Research" tab.
I graduated from LSU in the spring of 2008, then immediately began my master's degree at California State University, Fullerton with a focus in Medical Geography. I worked in the Spatial Epidemiology and Ecology Research (SEER) lab under Dr. Jason Blackburn and collaborated on multiple projects in the United States and Former Soviet Union (FSU) countries. My main area of research involved ecological niche and species distribution modeling with a focus on the spread of diseases. Additional projects focused on habitat management and conservation for endangered species. Halfway through my degree, Dr. Blackburn was offered a position in the Department of Geography at the University of Florida so I transferred to maintain my ongoing research and thesis topic and to provide continuity with projects in the SEER lab and specifically in the FSU. In the spring of 2010 I successfully defended my thesis and graduated from the University of Florida with a Master of Science degree in Geography. I continued to work for the SEER lab as a research assistant modeling the current and future distributions (based on the A2 and B2 climate change scenarios) of a tick species known to be a vector for Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever (CCHF) across the FSU.
During the latter part of my masters degree I became increasingly interested in climatology and disaster science and subsequently enrolled at LSU once again in the fall of 2010. I began an assistantship in the Disaster Science and Management Center working with Dr. Melanie Gall as a primary author on the LSU System Hazard Mitigation Plan. My main areas of contribution on the project encompassed hazard mapping and modeling as well as GIS database development and management. A few of the hazard models employed for the mitigation plan included economic loss models for floods and hurricanes as well as chemical release scenario models. In the summer of 2011 I also worked concurrently with Dr. Carol Friedland (Department of Construction Management and Industrial Engineering) and ImageCat, Inc. to estimate wind speed surfaces associated with multiple windstorms that occurred across Europe over the past three decades. The project was solicited by a reinsurance company to better understand damages and insurance losses incurred by the windstorms, which can be as powerful and destructive as hurricanes are in the United States. I employed a novel ordinary kriging approach to interpolate the observed wind speeds that accounted for anisotropic tendencies. This area of research rapidly developed into my dissertation topic and under the guidance of my advisor, Dr. Robert Rohli, I completed my dissertation proposal and general exams culminating in a successful proposal defense in March of 2012. I was awarded a Marshall Plan Fellowship for the summer of 2012 to study in Villach, Austria at the Carinthia University of Applied Sciences where I continued my research on European windstorms. I hope to soon expand into different regions in the United States also impacted by windstorms - the Pacific Northwest (i.e., 'winter storms') and the Northeast (i.e., Nor'easters). As a result of my research on European windstorms, I was able to successfully defend my dissertation in the spring of 2013 and graduated in May 2013.
I am currently an associate professor in the Department of Geosciences at East Tennessee State University in Johnson City, Tennessee. I teach Digital Mapping (Cartography), Spatial Statistics, GIS Projects, Advanced GIS, Campus Mapping, Hazard Mapping & Modeling, Habitat/Niche Modeling, Field Experience, and Geospatial Applications for Unmanned Aerial Systems. I am also the Director (2016-present) of the Geoinformatics & Disaster Science (GADS) Lab (which focuses on geospatial-based hazard mitigation plan development for various jurisdictional levels across the country) and the Graduate Coordinator (2017-present) for the GIS Certificate Program. I am also building the Tennessee Climate Office and serve as the acting State Climatologist. I currently advise or co-advise 21 graduate students (via thesis/dissertation research) and 14 undergraduate students (via advising, undergraduate honors thesis research, and independent studies). To find out more details about some of the projects I have worked on over the past several years go to the subheadings under the "Research" tab.
