About

This site is an archive of my academic career, which ended in 2017. You can find more current projects and information on me at my GitHub and LinkedIn.

About Me

I am a postdoctoral researcher at the Center for Limnology at University of Wisconsin - Madison. On this website you can find out about my Research interests, view my CV, find a time to meet, and find me hidden away at the CFL.

I am broadly interested in academic research that causes immediate advances in conservation practice. As a postdoc, I am working with a diverse team of researchers and practitioners from around the Great Lakes to improve decisions about the removal of barriers to migration for Great Lakes fishes, especially within the context of the invasive sea lamprey. My work adds to existing research and experience on this topic, including a neat decision support tool (https://greatlakesconnectivity.org/) produced by this group.

My dissertation focused on the terrestrial habitat impacts of natural gas development in the Central Appalachian region. I worked with The Nature Conservancy, Pennsylvania state agencies, and natural gas companies to create development strategies that reduce negative impacts from gas surface infrastructure without destroying developer profits. This enabled me to answer exciting questions such as "What are the trade-offs between doing better for the environment and spending more on development?" and "How much less impacting would gas surface infrastructure be if gas companies were environment-oriented from the start?" Watch my PhD Exit Seminar

Many of the most pressing needs in conservation are spatial in nature. As such, much of my research interests and expertise center around spatial modeling, optimization, and GIS. For instance, a major component of my work on the impacts of natural gas is a tool that optimally sites gas infrastructure to minimize indicators of habitat impacts. Likewise, my postdoc will advance an existing DST and think about how the directional, dendritic nature of hydrological networks affects decisions about conservation planning for aquatic connectivity.