Howdy!

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During the early years of my academic career my studies primarily focused on computer science (I love the movie Tron). Later, I became interested in applying my technical background towards geosciences, specifically the ocean. I graduated from Texas A&M University, Magna Cum Laude, with a B.S. in Geography/GIS and a minor in Oceanography (Whoop!)

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I tailored my degree towards the field of hydrography with an emphasis in coastal mapping. My first undergraduate research project was to investigate a methodology to measure the bathymetry of shallow water environments by obtaining in-situ data via consumer-grade acoustical instruments (i.e., a fish-finder). I was fortunate to be awarded with a grant that allowed me to travel to Costa Rica and acquire data to create a DEM of one of the nearshore zones experiencing severe rip currents.

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As an undergraduate research assistant for the Center for the Study of the First Americans (CSFA), I was sponsored to preform a fabric analysis of artifacts excavated from an underwater site using GIS mapping software. I later presented my work at three undergraduate research conferences where it was awarded at each. During this time I also assisted in an excavation at the Debra L. Friedkin site, and worked as a GIS consultant for the Ryan-Harley project by completing a few maps to assist in representing the Suwannee surface.

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After graduation I spent 16 weeks backpacking southeast Asia (yes, the food was great), and starting 2017 I was living in Shenzhen, China where I was working as  a teacher at Futian High School. In  2018, I completed my assignment and obtained a position as a research assistant at the University of Hong Kong under Dr. David Baker within the Coral Biochemistry Lab. There I assisted with a number of projects, but my primary focus was developing a proposal for developing complex artificial reefs, which was later funded by the local government and also became a start up.

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Starting the fall of 2018,  I moved back to the States to pursue my Master's degree in Oceanography with the Center for Coastal and Ocean Mapping (CCOM). While there, I worked in Dr. Jennifer Dijkstra's benthic ecology lab, focusing on using deep learning and computer vision algorithms for benthic habitat imagery data. During my time at UNH I was able to publish, present, and even won my university's Three-Minute Thesis competition.

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After defending my thesis in the winter of 2020 I accepted a position at Terradepth where I worked as a "data guy" doing computer vision, machine learning, and some back-end development. My primary task was to develop automatic target recognition (ATR) capabilities by using deep learning to find objects of interest in sonar data (you can check out my presentation on the topic from the 2022 CHC here), but I also played a role in the early development of the company's Absolute Ocean platform.

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Starting Fall of 2022 I accepted a position at CSS Inc., where I'm currently contracted to work with NOAA as an AI Scientist. I work on multiple projects within the National Center for Coastal and Ocean Sciences (NCCOS), most of which are related to coral (either shallow water, mesophotic, or deep benthic). My role is to help alleviate bottlenecks by creating custom software solutions, and to assist in moving the branch forward with the use of computer vision and machine learning algorithms.