About

Hi! I'm Abby. I grew up in the pine barrens of New Jersey, and I'm currently living in Ann Arbor, Michigan and working for the University of Washington. For work, I am a research analyst with the Buckley thermal ecology lab on theTrench Project.

I have my B.S.E. fromUniversity of Michiganwith a specialty in software engineering for ecology research. During my undergraduate, I worked with multipleecology labs on their research projects,including wetland plant invasion modelling, lake-effect snow modelling, and a survey of forested landowners. Please feel free to review mycoursework and CV.

I am passionate about sustainable agriculture and botany, andam voluntering at Nature and Nurture Seeds.

I also spend time practicingphotography and videography, dronework and 3D modelling. A subset of this work is viewable on myInstagram.

I am the2020 recipient of the Wallenberg Fellowship,and will be departing for Qaqortoq, Greenland in March of 2022. I am so excited to work with the flora and land stewards of the arctic.

TrEnCh: Tools for TRanslating ENvironmental CHange into organismal responses

Our goal is to build case studies of how animals are impacted by climate change to improve our approach to climate change biology education, policy, and research.

Trench-IR

Lead Developer of TrEnCh-IR. TrEnCh-IR is a repository and set of analysis tools for FLIR infrared images. This repository is intended to advance applications of thermal images in understanding how organisms interact with their thermal environments and resultant patterns of thermal stress. TrEnCh-IR is focused on 1) offering free, unlimited conversion of FLIR jpgs to access raw thermal images, embedded images, thermal parameters, and palettes, 2) maintaining an easy-access, diverse thermal image repository for use in education, research, and all other capacities, and 3) educating on how organisms respond to their thermal environment.

TrEnCh-IR It is built on Azure with Block Blob Storage, Node.js, Bootstrap, {{mustache}}, and exiftool. TrEnCh-IR services are in collaboration with ThermImageR and the Thermal Ecology Group.

Go to TrEnCh-IR

• Trench-Ed

TrEnCh-Ed is the educational branch of The TrEnCh Project, which builds computational and visualization tools to Translate Environmental Change into organismal responses. TrEnCh-Ed is designed to be utilized in high school science classrooms, bringing the cutting edge science of university climate change research to the next generation of scientists.

I have worked with the Dr. Buckley to update the website and visualizations, add teacher resources and educational standards, create answer keys for lesson plans, and assist the readying of the curriculum for use in the 2020 school year. I co-created the <Marine Range Shifts visualization, and have edited all other visualizations.

Go to TrEnCh-Ed

• TrenchR Modules

TrEnChR Modules is the educational guide to biophysical modeling using the TrenchR package. The modules are hosted on Bookdown with embedded R code to demonstrate the skills available in the R package. I helped edit the modules.

Go to the TrEnChR Modules

The Wallenberg Fellowship

Beginning in February 2022, I will embark on my Wallenberg journey. I was fortunate in being selected for theWallenberg Fellowship,which has granted me this unique opportunity.

Greenland was illuminated to me by my participation in the 2019 Greenland Expedition hosted by faculty from the Climate and Space Sciences and Engineering Department. On the expedition, we learned about remote fieldwork camping alongside an ice sheet and witnessed the warming climate pointed to by native Greenlanders and visiting scientists. I fell in love with the island of ice.

The Wallenberg Fellowship allows me to return and work alongside Greenlandic organizations for a full year. I will be over-wintering and experiencing winter and summer solstices in the southern region of the country. Qaqortoq, a town of three thousand and the fourth-largest town in Greenland, will be the main location of my work. While in the area, I will be traveling by boat through the fjords of the western coast and residing partially at Isortoq Reindeer Station.

While at the reindeer farm I will be working for my stay, including being both a helpful farm hand and an American contact. With my hopes of homesteading in the future, I will be thoroughly enthralled by and assisting with the day-to-day of living off the land in Greenland, including fishing, herding, gardening, food preparation, winter storage, and farm maintenance.

I will work with UNESCO World Heritage Kujataa and Innovation Southern Greenland in Qaqortoq. Greenland's intense remoteness leads to unfamiliarity with the deep history of the island and its inhabitants of 90% native Inuit Greenlanders. We hope to bridge this divide by creating 3-D models and online learning experiences of their key ruins and natural sites conserved by UNESCO Kujataa. I will also be conducting a vegetation survey of a nearby island, to allow monitoring of the arctic ecosystems.

2019 Greenland Expedition

Co-author: "Seeing the Greenland Ice Sheet Through Students' Eyes"

Participant in "Melting Ice, Rising Seas" Coursera Teach-Out

I travelled with a research team from U of Michigan, U of Albany, and Virginia Tech to Greenland to conduct climate science research for a 10 day expedition in June 2019. The expedition was led by the Climate and Space Sciences and Engineering department. The expedition was based in Kangerlussuaq, Greenland at the Kangerlussuaq International Science Station (KISS) NSF building. Our research then brought us to the edge of Russell Glacier, where we camped out for two nights. Our expedition also visited Greenland's Summit Station. I gained experience with drones, pyballs, weather balloons, Hobo stream flow, and radiative transfer. Stream flow measurements in the glacial runoff streams produced by Russell Glacier. The team also created a 3D map of Russell Glacier using Phantom4 drone imagery. The expedition sought to introduce students to international and remote fieldwork.

Photography and Film

Sony A7III & DJI Mavic 2 Pro

Drone filming

Photogrammetry

Farming

Volunteer at N&N, Fall of 2021. Ann Arbor, MI.

Nature and Nurture is an Ann Arbor seed farm growing heirloom, sustainably grown, non-GMO seeds. My work included harvesting seeds in many varieties and methods, winnowing, planting, and understanding the varying signs of seeds maturity.

Rancocas Creek Farm

Volunteer at RCF in its first season, Summer and Fall of 2020. Medford, NJ.

Rancocas Creek Farm is a chemical-free, regenerative farm established through donation of 72 acres previously in monoculture soybean. It is run by Pinelands Preservation Alliance (PPA), a volunteer-driven, nonprofit organization committed to the ongoing protection of the New Jersey Pinelands.

Teaching

United Technologies for Kids

During May and June of 2019, I taught a STEM class in Lima, Peru with UTK. United Technologies for Kids (UTK) is a non-profit-startup that promotes STEM education in high schools in developing countries and low-income societies. They work as a platform to transfer knowledge and technology from US universities to schools through partnerships with student organizations from UC Berkeley, MIT, and the University of Michigan.

My co-teacher and I taught for three weeks the basics of electricity, sustainable and socially-minded design, Arduino, CAD, and 3D printing at St. George's.

I was active in recruiting for the 2020 cohort, which unfortunately was cancelled due to COVID-19.

African Leadership Academy

In June 2020, I worked with the African Leadership Academy's Summer Engineering Academy as a mentor. SEA was intended to run in South Africa, but the COVID-19 pandemic forced remote participation from the one-week program. Mentors and the leadership came from across the globe to remotely assist, and the students attended from Nigeria and Algeria. I mentored a group of 3 students on an engineering design challenge focused on the COVID-19 pandemic.

Research

Mondrian

Environmental modelling of native wetland plants to build invasion resistance

Research with Dr. Bill Currie, University of Michigan SEAS. Funded by Michigan Sea Grant Environmental Internship 2019 & 2020

MONDRIAN is a clonal herbaceous wetland simulator developed by Dr. William Currie and others (Currie et al. 2014). The model simulates plant competition within a native and invaded wetland. I worked with MONDRIAN and Dr. Currie in winter semester 2019 in an independent study, summer 2019 funded by Michigan Sea Grant, and summer 2020 funded by Michigan Sea Grant.

I produced two software products for MONDRIAN: a Moran's I spatial statistic calculator and a visualization tool. Both were utilized in further research. My research was focused on the spatial statistics of the biotic resistance of native wetland plant communities, i.e. the question: Does a regularly distributed or clumped native species community compete better against an invasive species? This research ended when it confirmed the null hypothesis that spatial structure as defined in the research had no correlation with biotic resistance. I presented my research with a poster and a presentation at the Michigan Sea Grant 2019 Symposium, and a powerpoint presentation at the Michigan Sea Grant 2020 Symposium.

NOAA/GLERL Lake-Effect Snow Modeling

Research with Dr. Ayumi Fujisaki-Manome, University of Michigan CLaSP and NOAA GLERL. Summer 2019, Ann Arbor, MI

The Great Lakes Coastal Forecasting System feeds into many areas of the local weather report of Michigan: precipitation, wind, and snow. Until a recent grant, it did not couple an atmospheric and land model with a dynamic Great Lakes water model. This was a significant failure when the model was forecasting lake-effect snow, a weather artifact heavily influenced by lake dynamics. NOAA and GLERL researchers have developed a new coupled model to forecast Michigan weather.

My first task on this research project was to create a software program to evaluate the forecasting abilities of various new coupled models. I wrote the code in python 3.6 with netCDF inputs. The software compares various model outputs with observations, focused on comparing average snow water equivalent, max snow water equivalent, and location of max snow water equivalent. My second task on this research project was to create a software program to plot the snow water equivalent on a map of the great lakes with easily adjustable polygon placement via lon/lat pairs.

Northwoods Survey

Research with Dr. Paige Fischer, University of Michigan SEAS. 2019, Ann Arbor, MI

I competed data entry and data analysis for the Northwoods Survey. The survey data was compiled in Excel. The data analysis was completed in Python 3.6. The survey sought to determine management strategies, climate impacts, and hardships noted by small woodlands owners in the Northwoods region. As well, I assisted in the editing of a grant proposal and tenure portfolio. I also assisted in compiling research for a literature review of Chilean forest management by small forested land owners.

Education

University of Michigan, College of Engineering 2020, with Honors

B.S.E. Computer Science Engineering

Minor in Climate Science and Impacts Engineering

Minor in Program in the Environment

Snide, C. E., L. Gilbert, A. Vath Meyer, P. Samson, M. Flanner, and J. Bassis (2020), Seeing the Greenland Ice Sheet through students' eyes, Eos, 101, https://doi.org/10.1029/2020EO139739. Published on 04 February 2020.

Coursework

Environmental & Ecological Modeling
Modeling for Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Principles of GIS, Earth System Modeling, Earth System Analysis, Applied Ecosystem Modeling (Audited)

Environmental Science & Botany
Botany in the Digital Age, General Ecology, Plant Ecophysiology, Plant Propagation, Earth System Evolution, General Chemistry, Environmental Law (Audited)

Computer Science
Database Management Systems, UI Development, Operating Systems, Data Structures & Algorithms, Computer Security, Mobile App Development, Computer Organization, Robotics

Math
Linear Algebra, Calculus I II & III, Discrete Math, Statistics, Physics I & II, Technical Communication

• Curriculum Vitae • Student Orgs

Organizations and Student Groups

Society of Les Voyageurs

United Technologies for Kids (UTK), Umich INvent chapter

Melting Ice Rising Seas Teach-Out

SHIFT Creator Space

Technische Universitat Berlin

Technische Universitat Berlin

Summer robotics program in Berlin, Germany. Worked with 5 other undergraduate engineers to code a remote controlled bluetooth M3PI and arduino robot. Also created software for path-following akin to warehouse robots. Wrote code for designation-based path-following and racecar path-following.

Embedded C++; Arduino; Python

Awards & Grants

The Wallenberg Fellowship • $25,000 • 2021

College of Engineering Scholarship of Honor • $80,000 • 2016-2020

Technologies and Skills

Botany

Plant identification in the field; plant dissection; plant propagation

Software Engineering

Azure Web Services: full stack development, cloud computing, UI.

Languages: C++, R, Python, Javascript, MATLAB, C, Java, SQL, HTML, CSS.

Development: Agile Development, Object Oriented Programming, Test-Driven Development

Tools: GIT, RShiny, ArcGIS, JIRA, OpenCV, mySQL, QT & QT Designer, Eclipse/Visual Studio/Xcode, {{mustache}}, Node.js, exiftool, Bootstrap

Software Engineering Internships

Lockheed Martin: Summer 2018. Denver, CO.

CME Group: Summer 2017. Chicago, IL.