Office: Room 4093, Engineering
Phone: (307) 766-5294
Email: eaikens@uwyo.edu

Dr. Ellen O. Aikens is a quantitative wildlife ecologist whose research is rooted in applied data science. Ellen holds a joint appointment with the School of Computing and the Haub School. A primary goal of Ellen’s research is to produce knowledge that advances ecological understanding, while also addressing critical conservation and management issues. Her research merges animal tracking, remote sensing, and field research to gain insights into the resource and habitat requirements of wildlife. This approach helps to define critical habitat for wildlife, understand wildlife responses to environmental change, and plan large landscape conservation efforts. Much of her current research focuses on highly mobile species, including migratory mammals and birds.

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Office: Room 323, Agriculture C
Phone: (307) 760-9993
Email: salbeke@uwyo.edu

Dr. Shannon Albeke has been part of WyGISC since 2010 and is a Senior Research Scientist and Faculty member. His primary research focuses around applied GIS, programming and statistics. As such, he provides research support for faculty and graduate students within the Program in Ecology as well as many other departments and programs within UW. His teaching centers on database management and applied GIS methods using primarily open source software.

Shannon earned a B.A. in Environmental Sciences with minors in Geography and Geology in 1997 from the University of Colorado - Boulder. He then began an 8-year career as an Aquatic Habitat Biologist for the Colorado Division of Wildlife, and by necessity, learned how to be a GeoSpatial Data Scientist. In 2006, he resigned from CDOW to become a PhD student at the University of Georgia where he worked on Coastal River Otters in Prince William Sound, AK, earning his PhD in 2010.

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Office: EN 4085
Phone: (307) 766-5225
Email: gdallen@uwyo.edu

Gabrielle Allen was appointed the Director of the School of Computing in March 2022 after a university-wide search. Previously, she held an administrative role as the Special Assistant for Strategic Initiatives in the Office of Research and Economic Development. Gabrielle holds academic appointments as a Professor of Mathematics and Adjunct Professor of Physics and Astronomy. Gabrielle joined the University of Wyoming in January 2021, moving from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign where she served in multiple roles as Professor of Astronomy, Associate Dean for Research in the College of Education, Associate Director for Research at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, and Adjunct professor in Computer Science and Curriculum and Instruction.

Gabrielle's other previous professional appointments include research scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics in Potsdam, Germany, the Russell Long Professor of Computer Science at Louisiana State University (LSU), and founding member and Assistant Director of its Center for Computation and Technology. She served as a Program Director in the Office of Cyberinfrastructure at the National Science Foundation (NSF) from 2010-2012, where she was responsible for leading an NSF-wide working group running cross-agency software programs, including software institutes, and leading the OCI Learning and Workforce Development cluster.

Gabrielle's research work has focused on the development and application of scientific community software, including the Cactus Framework, Einstein Toolkit, and Grid Application Toolkit. Although her work has predominantly been related to simulations of black holes, neutron stars, and gravitational waves, her group's software has also been applied in fields as diverse as petroleum engineering, computational chemistry, coastal modeling, and computational fluid dynamics. The interdisciplinary nature of her research is reflected in her former faculty positions in Computer Science, Physics, Astronomy, Curriculum and Instruction, and her role as Associate Dean of Education. She has published over 100 refereed journal and conference papers and has been awarded the Gordon Bell Prize in Supercomputing in 2001, the IEEE International Scalable Computing Challenge in 2009, and the High-Performance Bandwidth Challenge in 2002. In 2017, she was elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society.

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Office: UW Casper Campus
Phone: (307) 268-2543
Email: gbarrile@uwyo.edu

I am an applied quantitative ecologist with a strong focus on wildlife responses to environmental change. I work at the intersection of disease ecology, population demography, and animal behavior, often investigating how natural and anthropogenic disturbances influence host-pathogen dynamics. Though I work across taxonomic systems (e.g., fish, amphibians, mammals), a common theme that bridges all my research is the use of cutting-edge techniques in data science to inform species conservation. This involves leveraging machine learning algorithms and artificial intelligence to analyze large datasets and integrate predictive models into user-friendly applications to aid the decision-making of wildlife practitioners.

My research has made several strong contributions to basic and applied ecology. For instance, I have (1) demonstrated that stochastic variability in patch quality can underpin dispersal behavior in wild animals, (2) revealed complex interactions among climate, phenology, and disturbances (e.g., wildfire, cattle grazing) in predicting the timing and location of wildlife epizootics, and (3) characterized the movement behavior and vital rates of wildlife in highly altered systems. My most significant contribution, however, is helping to facilitate the integration of host-pathogen ecology and habitat selection theory. Infectious disease has traditionally been overlooked as an important evolutionary force shaping animal space use, and linking host behavior and disease dynamics is a central issue in wildlife disease ecology. By collecting concomitant measurements of host habitat choices and infection status, I demonstrated that some animals can behaviorally modify the use of habitats in response to infection, providing strong evidence that disease can comprise an important selective pressure on animal movement.

I have authored or co-authored 10 peer-reviewed articles (with an additional four that are submitted, under review, or in revision) with first-authored publications in outlets such as American Naturalist, Ecosphere, Journal of Animal Ecology, Biological Conservation, Ecological Applications, Journal of Herpetology, PLoS ONE, and Ecology and Evolution. To support my research, I have co-raised over $500,000 in funding. Most projects are collaborative, including close collaborations with state (e.g., Wyoming Game and Fish Department), federal (e.g., USDA-ARS), and university partners (e.g., Colorado State University).

I care deeply about students. One of my main goals is to facilitate student growth, both personally and professionally. I mostly teach ecology and statistics courses, but I’ve led DEIJ-focused courses as well. I strive to make all course materials freely available whenever possible. Thus, I often record videos and post lectures and code online, such that anyone can access the material. Finally, I am committed to enhancing diversity and inclusion in STEM fields and working to make ecology a more equitable and just discipline. I believe that creating a positive workplace climate is a key first step in attracting, retaining, and genuinely supporting people from diverse backgrounds in the field of ecology.

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Office: Room 4079B, Engineering
Phone: (307) 766-5229
Email: jian.gong@uwyo.edu

Jian is an interdisciplinary scientist interested in applying computing to diverse fields of science, arts, and engineering. Their goal at the School of Computing is to promote computational science as an exciting toolkit for anyone who would like to try something new in their own research, arts, studies, or businesses. Computing will assist you to become a better thinker, designer, artist, and engineer in unexpected new ways.

In their own research, Jian study complex systems, self-organization, environmental-biological evolution, and the origin of life. They work on NASA-sponsored research projects to help find signatures of life beyond Earth. Jian is also a maker, artist, and owner of a local company in Downtown Laramie called Cosmomakers.

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Office: Room 4084A, Engineering
Phone: (307) 766-5230
Email: sean.field@uwyo.edu

I am a UW Derecho Assistant Professor in the School of Computing and Department of Anthropology at the University of Wyoming. I use computer applications to study how people cope(d) with climate stress in the deep past and present. Although I spend a lot of time in front of a computer dealing with large geo-spatial datasets, writing code, and analyzing remotely sensed data I have also had the opportunity to do fieldwork across the U.S. Southwest and Western Europe. For the last five years, most of my field work has taken place in Mesa Verde National Park.

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Office: Room 335, Agriculture C
Phone: (307) 766-2736
Email: jeff.hamerlinck@uwyo.edu

Dr. Jeff Hamerlinck has served as Director of the Wyoming Geographic Information Science Center since 2004. In this role he is responsible for guiding the Center's strategic vision and overall operations. As WyGISC Director he serves on the State of Wyoming Governor's GIS Advisory Board and is active in the University Consortium for Geographic Information Science (UCGIS). His teaching and research interests range from land-use and environmental planning to spatial data infrastructure management and place-based planning support systems.

Jeff received his PhD in Geography from the University of Colorado-Boulder, where he studied the use of information and communication technologies (ICT) in rural community land-use planning. He is a member of the American Institute of Certified Planners (AICP) and holds the designation of GIS Professional (GISP) by the GIS Certification Institute. A 2011 graduate of Leadership Wyoming, Jeff is an avid fly-fisher and day-hiker, and has recently re-discovered recreational tennis.

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Office: Room 330, Agriculture C
Phone:
Email: jhawes@uwyo.edu

Jason "Jake" Hawes is an Assistant Professor at the University of Wyoming School of Computing and Haub School of Environment and Natural Resources. Jake is an interdisciplinary scholar of the environment, exploring the intersection of computing with social and spatial science. At this intersection, his lab employs mixed methods to explore more robust modeling and planning for coupled natural-human systems. Prior to arriving at Wyoming, Jake worked with the Critical Infrastructure Security and Resilience division at Idaho National Laboratory, where he retains a joint appointment. Jake's interdisciplinary training included a BS in Environmental and Ecological Engineering and an MS in Natural Resources Social Science, both at Purdue University, before his PhD in Environment and Sustainability at the University of Michigan.

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Office: Room 307, Agriculture C
Phone: (307) 766-3709
Email: phodza@uwyo.edu

Paddington Hodza is a Senior Research Scientist at WyGISC. He is a native of Zimbabwe where he completed BSc Surveying and MSc Land and Geographic Information Systems at the University of Zimbabwe. Paddington worked for World Wide Fund for Nature and Environment and Remote Sensing Institute before moving to the U.S. in 2002 to pursue a PhD in Geography at West Virginia University. He joined University of Colorado, Colorado Springs in 2007 where he directed the GIScience Certificate program for which he led the development. He is a certified GIS Professional, licensed FAA Drone Pilot, recipient of Carnegie African Diaspora Fellowship and Leadership Wyoming alumnus. He was elected to the UCGIS Board of Directors for a 3-year term beginning in 2019 and serves on UCGIS Education Committee and University of Wyoming Faculty Senate. His current research interests include UAS, multi-modal GIS education, positivity GIS, immersive geo-visualization and spatial data science.

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Office: EN 4081B
Phone: (307) 766-5299
Email: mjoyce8@uwyo.edu

This year (2024), I am joining the faculty at the University of Wyoming as a tenure-track assistant professor, appointed jointly in the College of Engineering and Physical Sciences' School of Computing and Department of Physics & Astronomy.

I currently hold one of the European Union's most prestigious fellowships for young scientists: the Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions Widening Fellowship. On this grant, I study stellar interior mixing processes and determine the ages of stars with host CSFK Konkoly Observatory in Budapest, Hungary. In August of 2019, I joined the MESA developers.

I am a frequent collaborator with my former colleagues at the Space Telescope Science Institute, at which I held the Lasker Data Science Fellowship from 2021 - 2022. I have worked and continue to work closely with many international groups, including the University of Sydney's asteroseismology group, Monash University's stellar astrophysics and nucleosynthesis group, and the network of stellar astrophysicists connected by the MESA (Modules for Experiments in Stellar Astrophysics) software suite.

In 2018, I completed my Ph.D. in computational stellar structure and evolution under the advising of Professor Brian Chaboyer at Dartmouth College. The last two years of my Ph.D. were spent jointly at the South African Astronomical Observatory (SAAO) in Cape Town, South Africa. My area of expertise is theoretical stellar evolution and precision stellar modeling.

When I'm not building stars or pushing computers to their limits, I enjoy hiking, playing piano, dancing, painting, skiing, and advocating for the inclusion and support of women and other historically excluded groups in physics and software development.

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Office: Room 4079A, Engineering
Phone: (307) 766-5234
Email: akirby@uwyo.edu

In the School of Computing, I collaborate with researchers across campus to help elevate their high-performance computing needs through the use of UWYO's ARCC and the NWSC's supercomputing resources. I do research in scientific computing on massively parallel supercomputers including NWSC's Cheyenne and Derecho, as well as at leadership-class computing facilities such as Summit (OLCF), Perlmutter (NERSC), Mira (ALCF), Eagle (NREL), and TX-GAIA (MIT).

I’m leading research projects in the fields of Wind Energy and Aerospace, including work with NREL and NASA. In the past, I worked at MIT Lincoln Laboratory in the Supercomputing Group (LLSC), as a Postdoctoral Associate developing advanced parallel algorithms for Deep Learning.

I did my Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Wyoming under the direction of Professor Dimitri Mavriplis where I worked on the development of high-order numerical methods for multi-scale computational fluid dynamics problems. During my Ph.D. studies, I was fortunate to be selected as an NSF Blue Waters Graduate Fellow, in which I performed the highest-fidelity blade-resolved wind farm simulations to date on leadership-class supercomputers! Additionally, I spent several months working with the U.S. ARMY’s CREATE-AV HELIOS Team at NASA Ames Research Center on my doctoral research.

Before changing to the dark side of computational mathematics and engineering, I did an M.S. at Columbia University in Applied Mathematics, and a B.S. in Mathematics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

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Office: Room 4084B, Engineering
Phone: (307) 766-5245
Email: bkoger@uwyo.edu

My work focuses on creating systems that allow for the efficient and automated study of ecological systems. Specifically, I focus on combining imaging and computer vision to study the relationship between individuals and their social and physical landscapes.
Currently, I am an assistant professor and the University of Wyoming in the School of Computing and the Department of Zoology and Physiology. Previously I was a Washington Research Foundation Postdoctoral Scholar in the School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences at the University of Washington working with Professor Andrew Berdahl.
For my Ph.D. I worked with Iain Couzin at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior in the Department of Collective Behavior in Konstanz Germany. I finished my bachelors in 2016 with a degree in electrical engineering from Princeton University where I focused on image processing and machine learning. Currently I am using drones and computer vision to study pacific salmon migration and behavior in Alaska.

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Office: Room 329, Agriculture C
Phone: (307) 766-2749
Email: amadson@uwyo.edu

Austin Madson is an assistant professor at WyGISC. He received his PhD from UCLA in the Department of Geography in 2020 and leads classes in Remote Sensing (RS) and UAVs within the WyGISC GIST framework. He is a physical geographer with research interests within the Earth and geoscience realms. In particular, Austin utilizes advanced RS techniques (insar, lidar, optical) along with computational modeling and field instrumentation to study hydrologic and geo-morphologic changes.

He has interests in geodesy, Raspberry Pi projects, cluster computing, data processing parallelization, data visualization, open-source programming, low-cost GNSS hardware, semi-autonomous rover and UAV construction, sensor fusion, UAS data acquisition, SfM, lidar and radar RS techniques, real-world applications in the use of RS and GIS, and the integration of RS and GIS technologies. Austin enjoys tinkering on projects, fieldwork, soccer, and just soaking up the outdoors.

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Office: Room 308, Agriculture C
Phone: (307) 287-2891
Email: mmcmilla@uwyo.edu

Beth McMillan joined the Wyoming Geographic Information Science Center (WyGISC) as director for academic programs in 2022. She is responsible for the operation and growth of WyGISC's interdisciplinary undergraduate and graduate programs in Geospatial Information Science and Technology (GIST). Prior to joining the University of Wyoming, she was a faculty member at University of Arkansas at Little Rock where she served as chairperson in the Department of Earth Sciences and as developer and coordinator of their graduate Geospatial Technology certificate program. She has taught GIS and Remote Sensing courses to graduate and undergraduate students for 18 years.

Beth received her BA in Geology from Colorado College, MS in Environmental Science and Engineering from Colorado School of Mines and PhD in Geology from the University of Wyoming. Her research interests focus on the interaction between external and internal Earth processes and how these shape land-forms. Her dissertation was on the late Cenozoic landscape evolution of the Rocky Mountains which was inspired by remnant land-forms in the basins and ranges of Wyoming.

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Office: Room 329, Agriculture C
Phone:
Email: sli11@uwyo.edu

 

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Office: Room 4087, Engineering
Phone: (307) 766-5280
Email: dane.taylor@uwyo.edu

Prior to joining the University of Wyoming in 2023, Dr. Taylor was an assistant professor at the University at Buffalo, State University of New York (2017-2023) with affiliations in the Department of Mathematics and the Institute for Artificial Intelligence and Data Science. Before that, he was a postdoctoral scholar at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (2015-2017) and the Statistical and Applied Mathematical Sciences Institute (2013-2015).

Dr. Taylor has published over 40+ papers on network-based modeling for data and complex systems and is a recognized leader on the application of mathematics to these fields. He been the main organizer for the 2022 Northeast Regional Conference on Complex Systems, the 2020 SIAM Workshop on Network Science, and many minisymposia for conferences including NetSci, the SIAM Conference on Mathematics of Data Science, and the SIAM Conference on Applications of Dynamical Systems. Outside of professional life, Dr. Taylor enjoys hiking, snowboarding and mountain biking.

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Office: Room 331, Agriculture C
Phone: (307) 766-2721
Email: sivan@uwyo.edu

Dr. Ramesh Sivanpillai is a remote sensing scientist with the Wyoming Geographic Information Science Center at the University of Wyoming where he teaches remote sensing courses and directs the WyomingView program. He received his B. Sc Physics from PSG College of A&S, M. Sc Environmental Studies from Cochin University of S&T, M. Phil Environmental Sciences from Bharathiar University (all from India), M. S Environmental Sciences & Policy from University Wisconsin - Green Bay, and PhD Forestry from Texas A&M University.

For more than 25 years he has worked on digital processing of remotely sensed data for applications forestry, range-land, agriculture, water bodies, disaster assessment, and land cover/land use studies. He has worked with several national and international agencies, and academic institutions in India, United States of America, Mexico, Mali, Nicaragua, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Russia, Kenya, and Australia. He has served on the Board of Directors of AmericaView and is serving on the board of the ASPRS-RMR chapter. He serves as an associate editor in the Journal of Applied Remote Sensing (since 2008) and Frontiers of Earth Science (since 2014).

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Office: Room 6034, Engineering
Phone: (405) 471-1117
Email: srahimi@uwyo.edu

Growing up in Oklahoma, I became captivated about the physics of severe weather. During my M.Sc., I worked to improve the accuracy of trajectories around a simulated ultra-high-resolution tornadic supercell. As I moved into my Ph.D., I became more fascinated with climate processes, its variability, and anthropogenic forcings; I studied this topic by using many different numerical modeling frameworks (regional climate models, global climate models, and variable-resolution global climate models). This led me to the work I have been engaged with over the past 4 years, creating the most comprehensive set of high-resolution physics based climate projections across the western U.S. through the year 2100.

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Office: Room 332, Agriculture C
Phone: (307) 766-2532
Email: cxu3@uwyo.edu

Dr. Chen Xu is an Associate Professor in the Wyoming Geographic Information Science Center (WyGISC). He joined the Department of Geography as an Assistant Professor in 2014 and joined WyGISC after the restructuring of the curriculum in 2019. He received a B.S. in engineering from Sichuan University, China, in 1999, and an M.S. in computer science from Sam Houston State University in 2005. He received his Ph.D. in Geography from Texas A&M University, College Station in 2010. From 2010 to 2014 he worked at George Mason University as a research scientist.

His research interests span both geocomputation and geographic information science. Much of his work has been on improving the understanding and design of volunteered geographic information (VGI) system, mainly through the application of geocomputation and data mining technologies. In the geographic information science area, he has worked on applying cybernetic theories to geospatial investigations.

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Office: Room 323, Agriculture C
Phone: (307) 760-9993
Email: salbeke@uwyo.edu

Dr. Shannon Albeke has been part of WyGISC since 2010 and is a Senior Research Scientist and Faculty member. His primary research focuses around applied GIS, programming and statistics. As such, he provides research support for faculty and graduate students within the Program in Ecology as well as many other departments and programs within UW. His teaching centers on database management and applied GIS methods using primarily open source software.

Shannon earned a B.A. in Environmental Sciences with minors in Geography and Geology in 1997 from the University of Colorado - Boulder. He then began an 8-year career as an Aquatic Habitat Biologist for the Colorado Division of Wildlife, and by necessity, learned how to be a GeoSpatial Data Scientist. In 2006, he resigned from CDOW to become a PhD student at the University of Georgia where he worked on Coastal River Otters in Prince William Sound, AK, earning his PhD in 2010.

More information about Shannon's work >

Office: Room 4079B, Engineering
Phone: (307) 766-5229
Email: jian.gong@uwyo.edu

Jian is an interdisciplinary scientist interested in applying computing to diverse fields of science, arts, and engineering. Their goal at the School of Computing is to promote computational science as an exciting toolkit for anyone who would like to try something new in their own research, arts, studies, or businesses. Computing will assist you to become a better thinker, designer, artist, and engineer in unexpected new ways.

In their own research, Jian study complex systems, self-organization, environmental-biological evolution, and the origin of life. They work on NASA-sponsored research projects to help find signatures of life beyond Earth. Jian is also a maker, artist, and owner of a local company in Downtown Laramie called Cosmomakers.

More information about Jian's work >

Office: Room 335, Agriculture C
Phone: (307) 766-2736
Email: jeff.hamerlinck@uwyo.edu

Dr. Jeff Hamerlinck has served as Director of the Wyoming Geographic Information Science Center since 2004. In this role he is responsible for guiding the Center's strategic vision and overall operations. As WyGISC Director he serves on the State of Wyoming Governor's GIS Advisory Board and is active in the University Consortium for Geographic Information Science (UCGIS). His teaching and research interests range from land-use and environmental planning to spatial data infrastructure management and place-based planning support systems.

Jeff received his PhD in Geography from the University of Colorado-Boulder, where he studied the use of information and communication technologies (ICT) in rural community land-use planning. He is a member of the American Institute of Certified Planners (AICP) and holds the designation of GIS Professional (GISP) by the GIS Certification Institute. A 2011 graduate of Leadership Wyoming, Jeff is an avid fly-fisher and day-hiker, and has recently re-discovered recreational tennis.

More information about Jeff's work >

Office: Room 4079A, Engineering
Phone: (307) 766-5234
Email: akirby@uwyo.edu

In the School of Computing, I collaborate with researchers across campus to help elevate their high-performance computing needs through the use of UWYO's ARCC and the NWSC's supercomputing resources. I do research in scientific computing on massively parallel supercomputers including NWSC's Cheyenne and Derecho, as well as at leadership-class computing facilities such as Summit (OLCF), Perlmutter (NERSC), Mira (ALCF), Eagle (NREL), and TX-GAIA (MIT).

I’m leading research projects in the fields of Wind Energy and Aerospace, including work with NREL and NASA. In the past, I worked at MIT Lincoln Laboratory in the Supercomputing Group (LLSC), as a Postdoctoral Associate developing advanced parallel algorithms for Deep Learning.

I did my Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Wyoming under the direction of Professor Dimitri Mavriplis where I worked on the development of high-order numerical methods for multi-scale computational fluid dynamics problems. During my Ph.D. studies, I was fortunate to be selected as an NSF Blue Waters Graduate Fellow, in which I performed the highest-fidelity blade-resolved wind farm simulations to date on leadership-class supercomputers! Additionally, I spent several months working with the U.S. ARMY’s CREATE-AV HELIOS Team at NASA Ames Research Center on my doctoral research.

Before changing to the dark side of computational mathematics and engineering, I did an M.S. at Columbia University in Applied Mathematics, and a B.S. in Mathematics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

More information about Andrew's work >