About Us

Cayelan Carey

Center Co-Director & Professor

cayelan@vt.edu

I strive to advance our predictive understanding of freshwaters in a changing world by developing new technologies for monitoring lakes and reservoirs, integrating data with models, and cultivating collaborative and interdisciplinary teams of scientists, managers, and other community members.

Quinn Thomas

Center Co-Director & Professor

rqthomas@vt.edu

I am excited about developing and applying novel quantitative techniques to examine the effects of global change on the environment, with the overarching objective of forecasting terrestrial and aquatic ecosystem dynamics into the future.

Mary Lofton

Research Scientist 

melofton@vt.edu

I use ecological modeling and forecasting to understand and predict the future of our freshwater resources and develop ecological forecasting educational materials for undergraduate students. My goal is to enable a predictive, pre-emptive approach to water quality management, and help undergraduate students develop data science and systems-thinking skills.

Rohit Shukla

Post-doc 

 rohitshukla@vt.edu 

I work on advancing water quality forecasting through the application of state-of-the-art machine learning tools.  

Molly Stroud

Post-doc

mollystroud@vt.edu

I use remote sensing of water quality to improve forecasts in drinking water reservoirs.  

Austin Delany

Environmental Data Scientist

addelany@vt.edu

I maintain and enhance the automated infrastructure, data pipelines, and software across all of the team’s projects.

Adrienne Breef-Pilz

Sensor Technician & Field Program Manager

abreefpilz@vt.edu  

I create, maintain, and enhance environmental sensors used in forecasting workflows, and work closely with managers to help our data and forecasts be more effectively used by the broader community

Dan Stanton

Program Coordinator

Danstanton5@vt.edu

Through program management and coordination, I strive to enable each person on this innovative team of scientists to be their best.

George Allen

Geosciences

Associate Professor

Center Associated Project: Intergrating Earth Observations into Water Quality Forecasting Pipelines

I use satellites to study Earth’s freshwater resources, often at the global scale. My work is motivated by a desire to promote the conservation, sustainable management, and understanding of Earth's surface water resources. 

Ryan Calder

Population Health Sciences

Associate Professor

Center Associated Project: Rules of Life Algal Bloom Forecasting and CHIRRP

I work at the interface of ecological modeling, human health risk assessment and decision science. I strive to improve our predictive ability for the interacting environmental and health impacts of civil infrastructure projects linked to energy transitions and in supporting the development of science-based policy.

Bobby Gramacy

Statistics

Professor

Center Associated Project: Rules of Life Algal Bloom Forecasting

I specialize in areas of real-data analysis to make modeling solutions more efficient and easier to use. I develop cutting-edge statistical software and methods that can be broadly applied across domains.

Leah Johnson

Statistics

Associate Professor

Center Associated Project: NEON Ecological Forecasting Challenge

I work at the intersection of statistics, biology, and mathematics to model and forecast infectious disease, as well as dynamics in behavioral and population ecology.

Anuj Karpatne

Computer Science

Associate Professor

Center Associated Project: Ecological Knowledge Guided Machine Learning

I strive to push the capabilities of current standards of machine learning (ML) in solving scientific and societally relevant problems by developing novel methodologies in the emerging field of scientific Knowledge-guided Machine Learning (KGML).

Wendy Parker

Philosophy 

Professor

Center Associated Project: Fit and Adequent for Purpose Forecasting

I study the philosophy of science, with a focus on issues in climate science and meteorology. I am interested in how scientists have developed evidence that global climate change is occurring and is anthropogenic and, especially, in the role of computational modeling in this regard.

Madeline Schreiber

Geosciences

Professor

Center Associated Project: Virginia Reservoirs LTREB, Rules of Life Algal Bloom Forecasting, and CHIRRP

I specialize in chemical hydrogeology and developing approaches to make quantitative predictions about solute behavior in natural waters.

Michael Schwob

Statistics

Assistant Professor

Center Associated Project: Forest Responses to Nitrogen Deposition

I am excited about developing scientifically interpretable and computationally efficient statistical methods for spatio-temporal data in ecology and environmental sciences.

Lenny Smith

Computer and Electricial Engineering

Professor

Center Associated Project: Forecast Evaluation

I aim for the development of a coherent framework for using imperfect models to better understand and predict real dynamical systems, extract insights from model output in the context of today's scientific understanding, and improve today's best models while maintaining realistic expectations of just how much that investment will return

Maike Holthuijzen, Post-doc

Freya Olsson, Post-doc

Tim Morin, Sabbatical Visitor