Affilitations
Postdoctoral Scholar
eDNA Explorer Inc.
Visiting Scientist
University of California, Santa Cruz
About Me
I’m a Postdoctoral Scholar at eDNA Explorer Inc. and a Visiting Scientist at the University of California, Santa Cruz. I work where geospatial data and environmental DNA meet, with the goal of making biodiversity monitoring more scalable, reproducible, and useful for decision making.
My research asks how landscape structure organizes biodiversity, and how we can measure it. I combine eDNA metabarcoding with drone, airborne, and satellite remote sensing and spatial modeling to link hydrology and geomorphology to the communities that live in a landscape. Much of this work focuses on the terrestrial–aquatic interface, such as vernal pools, floodplains, and river networks, where small changes in elevation or connectivity can reorganize entire communities.
In 2026, I completed my Ph.D. in the Environmental Systems Graduate Group at the University of California, Merced, in the Earth Observation and Remote Sensing (EORS) Lab (PI: Dr. Erin Hestir). My dissertation used drone-mounted LiDAR to predict plant species richness in vernal pools, paired eDNA metabarcoding with remote sensing to assess biodiversity across floodplains and riverscapes, and produced OpenRES, an open-source QGIS plugin for classifying river networks into functional process zones. I also contributed to NASA’s BioSCape campaign in South Africa’s Greater Cape Floristic Region, which integrates airborne remote sensing with field and eDNA biodiversity data, and developed methods that fuse drone and satellite imagery.