My thesis focused on applying data science to urban ecology!
Check it out!Recently graduated MA in Geography
I graduated from Chaffey Community College in Rancho Cucamonga in 2015. It introduced me to the world of academic policy and statues. I majored in a specialized AA that focused on material shared throughout the UC system in California. To be frank, I would have never considered this had I not had an outstanding academic counsular at the time. They helped me navigate the entire UC system, and their knowledge aided me well beyond undergraduate studies. After earning my AA, I applied, and was accepted, into the University of California, Santa Barbara in 2017. I spent 3 years here and graduated in 2020 with a double major in Geography and Physics. My Geography degree came with a specialization in GIS, and I wanted to further pursue it at the highest level. I was accepted into the Geography department at CU, Boulder as a Master's student under Dr. Guofeng Cao in 2021 at STARlab. This website is dedicated to a summary of my work and research interests.
Space, Place, and Time
Programming and Syntax
Matter, Energy, and Force
As an undergraduate student, I specialzied in GIS modeling after failing quantum mechanics twice. Instead of dropping Physics all together, I decided to combine my interests and walk the path of a geophysicist. I've added old presentations, statisitcal tutorials, and helpful tips that I've encountered over the course of my academic career. Most the of this work is freely avaliable on my Github and has helped me evlove into the programmer I am today. My work with Dr. Cao mainly focused on leveraging computer science and statistical learning to advance geographic theory and research planning. My original interests aligned closly with Dr. Cao's work, and I was able to apply many topics from my undergraduate career while learning about it's applications to topics like food inscurity, urban health, and environmental justice. I have an extremly diverse skill set due to the multi-disiplinary tendencies of spatial-temporal research.
"Programming is like playing with Legos...except the instructions are often unclear and each brick must be handmade."
As a multi-disiplinary scholar, I have been fortunate enough to be apart of many research projects over the last decade. My thesis uses Google Earth Engine, EPA monitor data, and statistical learning methods to model surface ozone for urban exposure analysis. My research would not be possible without the programming skills I gained at UCSB. Here are some helpful tutorials I've kept in mind over the years:
Object-Oriented Programming
Applications, Webkits, and GUIs
Data Science and Automation
The premier machine learning language
The Statistician's Language
Easy, intuitive, and optimized for statistics
My thesis focused on surface ozone modeling. Using Google Earth Engine, EPA Air Quality Data, GitHub, and Python, I started the skeleton of an ML air pollution
model with geospatially corrected residuals trained on monitoring locations. The motivation for this can be seen in my early research projects and posters before I
started graduate school. Overall, I utilize a variety of programs to conduct spatial-temporal analyses in many disciplines:
Blogs, Programs and Additional Works
After developing a passion for GIS programming, I faced significant challenges with my physical and mental health, which led me to extend my graduate studies by two years to focus on recovery and growth. With newfound access to healthcare and several awarded funding opportunities, I was able to continue expanding my thesis and multidisciplinary skill set. During this time, I collaborated with prominent researchers who helped refine my technical and analytical abilities.
I had the pleasure of working with NC CASC as a CEST member to research a topographic signature of life. I wrote blog detailing it's importance and furture directions. This was part of a program called the Climate Adaptation Scientists of Tomorrow which funded my final semester at CU.
The FIRe Event Delineation tool (FIREDPY) created by Earth Lab at CU. I was briefly apart of some summer work that fixed some edge-case issues on the program. It's classifies individual burn detections into discrete events for further analysis (Balch et. al., 2020).
This will take you to an excerpt from my thesis. I only included the first three chapters After focusing on the machine learning and geostatistical applications of my work, I hope to apply my findings to more human centric research.
Eventually, this will take you to a GitHub that I created to begin translating my script into a more user friendly function. For now, this will take you to my thesis excerpt.
A potential biosignature is a substance or structure that might have a biological origin but requires more data or further study before reaching a conclusion about the absence or presence of life. Do they exist? If so, can we detect them in the topographic scape of Earth?
A map of fun points of interest.
As my network and social life grows, I hope to expand this map with more international points. Most of the road trips I've taken have been across the contiguous US with my Grandparents. Some of my favorite places and future destinations are on it as well!
