Where I'm from:

Although I was born in Boston, MA, I grew up in Ogden, UT, USA, where I found a love for the outdoors, in particular alpine terrain. My parents moved out to Utah when I was very young with the sole goal to ski, thus skiing and reflecting upon alone time in the mountains is a part of my core. However, the desert sandstone of Southern Utah has inspired a deep love for deserts as well.

How did I spark an interest for Earth science?

Not only did my parents gift me the love of skiing but also the love of science, as they yearned to share their passion for their professions in medicine and side-gigs in snow-science. I was lucky to be dragged along to conferences, experiments, procedures, and gatherings, which sparked an interest into the lifestyle of a "scientist". However, I have always had a natural desire to understand things around me and was fascinated by pioneering scientists such as Newton or Einstein and topics like space (of course), which ultimately provided the foundation to passionately persue technical endeavors.

Through my teenage years I had a start in music production and performing as a DJ. I spent years learning the complex theory and software, harnessing my artistic yet technical craft, and thought that may be my career path... However, making a hobby a profession is something I realized would eventually put a sour taste in my mouth, and I had a feeling there was more I wanted to contribute to society.

After I started college I took my first road trip to Moab, Utah, although I had lived in the state for 20ish years, and I was utterly captivated by the glowing red-orange sandstone cliff faces and the beautiful tarnishes from weathering reactions. While there I realized I must study Earth science, as it blends all my passions together and would allow me to answer questions I had been asking myself about the world around me my entire life. Best decision of my life! The world is a different place through the lens of an Earth scientist.

Reflection on Research Interests

Over the past 6 years I have been dabbling in various research, finding tools and practices that interest me the most for tackling complex problems. I have found a great passion for using remote sensing and geochemistry in tandem to assess landscape evolution, mineralogies, and environmental monitoring.

Remote sensing is a wonderful and extremely powerful tool allowing us to identify and monitor a vast array of materials from afar, without ever touching the material. I enjoy the artistic and physics based nature of remote sensing, which relies on the theory reflectance spectroscopy, and believe remote sensing is the most powerful tool we have to understand our currently changing Earth. I was lucky to have the oppurtunity to be a NASA DEVELOP participant for the summer of 2021, where I helped develp a web-app to monitor aquatic relevant to harmal algal events using NASA and ESA satellites and Google Earth Engine. I have been building off of that expierience since and have dug deeply into using code to automate many of my research analysis tasks and to create experiences such as this website and the Utah Remote Sensing Interface (URSI) embedded into this website (see Projects tab). However, they who hold a hammer will treat every problem as a nail (Law of the Instrument), and I seek to have a broad toolkit to approach problems in a variety of ways. Additionally, I aim to practice Chamberlin's Method of Multiple Working Hypotheses (1890!) as to continue to practice the most productive and unbiased way of science.

Quantitative geochemical analyses, such as mass spectrometry and X-Ray diffraction, are another interest of mine which I hope to continue to use in my career for understanding current or ancient landscapes and environments. Additionally, I find great value in the classical value of fieldwork and the observations that arise from geological explorations. Although we have fancy tools and techniques, some problems are only answered by new hypotheses and theories which we may only derive when observing relationships and features in the field. Thus, I am always striving to become a better field scientist and utilize tools such as drones to maximize observations from field campaigns.

Publications

Mapping mineralogy in evaporite basins through time using multispectral Landsat data: Examples from the Bonneville basin, Utah, USA

Southwestern Australia Acid-Saline Mineralogy: Observations From Reflectance Spectroscopy

Evolution of Great Salt Lake’s Exposed Lakebed (1984-2023)