Geospatial Data Scientist · Hydrogeologist · Environmental Hazards Modeler · Instructor
CIRES Earth and ESIIL Labs · University of Colorado Boulder
I build reproducible workflows for environmental modeling, remote sensing, and water resources. My work connects hydrogeologic analysis, spatial machine learning, and geospatial data engineering with research and teaching.
| Project | Focus and contribution |
|---|---|
| He Sapa Twin | Public-data prototype combining mining records, watershed and stream layers, provenance metadata, and a demonstration map for the Black Hills. Includes reproducible setup and validation checks. |
| Shadow Ecology | CIRES-funded research investigating whether spatial patterns in land-cover model errors can reveal missing environmental information and monitoring gaps. I lead the project as principal investigator. |
| Systems at Play | Computational experiments using games, puzzles, and simulations to teach probability, algorithms, and systems thinking. |
| Scientists Who Code | A demonstration repository for introducing interdisciplinary teams to collaborative computational research. |
My research interests include surface water, groundwater, fire modeling and Earth systems modeling, fire–vegetation prediction, multispectral remote sensing, and the spatial structure of model residuals.
As the primary data scientist at Daear Consulting, LLC, I partner with Oglala Lakota College on a USDA-NIFA-funded project developing hydrologic and agricultural workflows and data cubes for analysis, teaching, and Tribal data sovereignty.
At CU Boulder, I teach in the Graduate Earth Data Science Certificate program, ESIIL Stars, and the Data Short Course. I develop and teach materials covering environmental data analysis, data cubes, and modeling workflows, and participate in research hackathons.
Explore our shared instructional repositories: ESIIL Education.
- Programming: Python, R, SQL, Bash, C, Fortran
- Geospatial analysis: GeoPandas, Rasterio, GDAL, QGIS, ArcGIS Pro
- Data engineering: Xarray, Dask, Zarr, STAC, API-based data access
- Machine learning: Scikit-learn, PyTorch, TensorFlow, spatial and statistical modeling
- Hydrologic modeling: MODFLOW, ParFlow, AQTESOLV
- Computing and reproducibility: Git, GitHub, Docker, AWS, HPC/SLURM
- Visualization: Matplotlib, HoloViews/hvPlot, Folium, Tableau
- Principal Investigator: Shadow Ecology, CIRES, CU Boulder
- Lead Data Scientist: Daear Consulting, LLC
- Former Faculty: Oglala Lakota College
- Participant: American Geophysical Union Voices in Science
PhD, Geology and Geological Engineering · 2021
South Dakota School of Mines and Technology
BS, Interdisciplinary Earth and Environmental Sciences · 2013
Oglala Lakota College
Earlier projects: Yawapi