Affiliate Faculty – Center for Human-Earth System Science (CHESS)

Affiliate Faculty – Center for Human-Earth System Science (CHESS)
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College of Forestry, Wildlife and Environment
An, Li
Alexander, Heather
Anderson, Chris
Chen, Hao
Ding, Chen
Kalin, Latif
Kumar, Sanjiv
Lepczyk, Christopher
McCreary, Allie
Morse, Wayde
Narine, Lana
Samuelson, Lisa J.
Teeter, Larry
Valente, Jonathon
Willoughby, Janna
Yang, Zutao
Zhang, Yaoqi
College of Science and Mathematics
Billor, Nedret
Burton, Christopher
Ceyhan, Elvan
Chadwick, Nanette
Dobson, F. Stephen
Hawthorne, Timothy
Lee, MingKuo
Liu, Luyu
Marzen, Luke
McNeal, Karen
Medina, Martin
Mitra, Chandana
Rashotte, Aaron M.
Shepherd, Stephanie
Uddin, Ashraf
College of Agriculture
Batchelor, William
Chen, Charles Y.
Feng, Yucheng
Liu, Nannan
Miao, Ruiqing
Muntifering, Russell B.
Nadolnyak, Denis
Ortiz, Brenda
Srivastava, Puneet
Tian, Di
Colleg of Engineering
Fang, Xing
Liu, Bo
O’Donnel, Frances
Vasconcelos, Jose G.
College of Liberal Arts
Alley, Kelly
Sengupta, Aditi
College of Pharmacy
Yue, Zongliang
An, Li
Solon Martha Dixon Professor
Director, Center for Human-Earth System Science (CHESS)
College of Forestry, Wildlife and Environment
Google Scholar
Short CV
Areas of Research:
Understanding, envisioning, and conserving complex earth systems (e.g., complex human-environment systems, human-influenced ecosystems, protected areas) in the context
of global change
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Alexander, Heather
Associate Professor of Forest and Fire Ecology
College of Forestry, Wildlife and Environment
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Short CV
Areas of Research:
Forest and Fire Ecology, Forest Management and Restoration, Forest Carbon Storage, Carbon Vulnerability to Changing Fire Regimes
Alley, Kelly
Alumni Professor & Director of Anthropology
Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Social Work, College of Liberal Arts
Google Scholar
Short CV
Areas of Research:
Political ecology, wastewater management and reuse, water infrastructure, South Asia, Mexico
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Anderson, Christopher
Professor
College of Forestry, Wildlife and Environment
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Short CV
Areas of Research:
Wetland and floodplain ecology, urban ecology, land use effects and wetland and stream functions, coastal wetland management
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Batchelor, William
Professor
Department of Biosystems Engineering, College of Agriculture
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Short CV
Areas of Research:
Crop modeling
Sustainable energy solutions
Precision agriculture
Variable-rate production
Crop yield increase
Crop management systems
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Billor, Nedret
Professor & Director
Statistics and Data Science Programs Department of Mathematics and Statistics
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Short CV
Areas of Research:
Data science related research,  including  outlier detection, robust multivariate data analysis, robust functional data analysis, uncertainty quantification
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Ceyhan, Elvan
Marguerite Scharnagle Endowed Professor
Department of Math and Statistics
Google Scholar
Short CV
Areas of Research:
Statistical machine learning and data science; Random geometric graphs; Network optimization and traversal; Spatial point pattern and data analysis and their applications; Statistical Methods for Medical Data and Image Analysis
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Chen, Charles Y.
Professor
Department of Crop, Soil and Environmental Sciences, College of Agriculture
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Short CV
Areas of Research:
Improve crop adaptation to climate change and extremes through conventional and genomic approaches such as drought tolerance
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Chen, Hao
Assistant Professor of Forest Genomics
College of Forestry, Wildlife and Environment
Google Scholar
Short CV
Areas of Research:
Hao’s expertise lies in developing climate-smart forest trees that combine high productivity with enhanced environmental resilience. This involves a deep understanding of tree growth and wood formation in response to both abiotic and biotic stresses. You specialize in leveraging multi-omics approaches to infer gene regulatory networks (GRNs), identifying genetic interactions that determine key tree traits, and pinpointing targets for molecular breeding
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Chen, Rui
Assistant Professor
Agricultural and Resource Economics, Tuskegee University
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Short CV
Areas of Research:
Economics of Food, and Nutrition, Innovative Statistical Methods, Machine Learning, Experimental Econ., Finance, Resource and Envi. Econ
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Ding, Chen
Assistant Professor of Forest Ecophysiology
College of Forestry, Wildlife and Environment
Google Scholar
Short CV
Areas of Research:
Enhancing tree growth, wood quality, timber yield, resistance traits, carbon sequestration capabilities, species distribution and response to climate change
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Fang, Xing
Arthur H. Feagin Chair Professor
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, College of Engineering
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Short CV
Areas of Research:
Water quality and ecological modeling in aquatic systems (lakes, reservoirs, and estuaries) under past and future climate variations/scenarios
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Feng, Yucheng
Professor
Department of Crop, Soil and Environmental Sciences, College of Agriculture
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Short CV
Areas of Research:
Impact of climate change on microbial processes
How drought affects symbiotic nitrogen fixation in legumes
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Hawthorne, Timothy
Professor and Chair
Department of Geosciences
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Short CV
Areas of Research:
GIS, drones, geoscience education, mobile science labs, community-based scholarship
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Kalin, Latif
Professor
College of Forestry, Wildlife and Environment
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Short CV
Areas of Research:
Modeling watershed scale hydrologic processes and wetland nutrient cycling with a focus on land use/cover change impacts
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Kumar, Sanjiv
Assistant Professor
College of Forestry, Wildlife and Environment
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Short CV
Areas of Research:
Conducting climate modeling experiments to better understand the roles of land and vegetation processes and their coupled atmospheric interactions in improving soil moisture predictability, and clarifying the role of internal climate variability in regional climate change
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Lee, Ming-Kuo
Robert B. Cook Professor
Department of Geosciences, College of Science and Mathematics
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Short CV
Areas of Research:
Groundwater hydrology
Environmental geochemistry
Reactive transport of contaminants and bioremediation
Effects of climate change on water resources
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Lepczyk, Christopher
Associate Professor
College of Forestry, Wildlife and Environment
Google Scholar
Short CV
Areas of Research:
Climate change and human activity impacts on birds and other wildlife
Landscape patterns and processes
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Liu, Bo
Assistant Professor
Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering, College of Engineering
Google Scholar
Short CV
Areas of Research:
Machine learning
Deep learning
Healthcare informatics
Stochastic optimization
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Liu, Luyu
Assistant Professor
Department of Geosciences
Google Scholar
Short CV
Areas of Research:
My research goals are to promote sustainable and resilient mobility from a social equity perspective. Empirically, my interests are urban transport geography, primarily in public transport and micromobility. The core of my research questions is to mitigate and overcome car dependency in cities and to promote sustainability, accessibility, and social equity.
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Liu, Nannan
Faculty Endowed Professor
Department of Entomology and Plant Pathology, College of Agriculture
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Short CV
Areas of Research:
Insect Molecular Toxicology and Physiology
Mechanisms of insecticide resistance
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Marzen, Luke
Professor
Department of Geosciences, College of Sciences and Mathematics
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Short CV
Areas of Research:
Remote Sensing and Geographic Information Systems
Land Use Change
Water Resources
Biogeography
Weather and Climate
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McCreary, Allie
Assistant Professor, Parks & Recreation
College of Forestry, Wildlife and Environment
Google Scholar
Short CV
Areas of Research:
Climate change impacts to nature-based tourism and outdoor recreation management; collaborative management of parks and protected areas; understanding the outcomes of environmental education and environmental communication
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McNeal, Karen
Associate Professor
Department of Geosciences, College of Sciences and Mathematics
Google Scholar
Short CV
Areas of Research:
Geoscience education and geocognition where I explore questions concerning human understanding of Earth systems. My current work ties together the affective and cognitive domains of learning through both qualitative and quantitative methods in the context of climate change phenomena
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Miao, Ruiqing
Associate Professor
Department of Agricultural Economics and Rural Sociology, College of Agriculture
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Short CV
Areas of Research:
Agriculture’s impact on land use, water use, water quality, and biodiversity, and how agricultural production is affected by farmers’ behaviors, public policies, agricultural innovation, technology adoption, and climate change
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Mitra, Chandana
Assistant Professor
Department of Geosciences, College of Sciences and Mathematics
Google Scholar
Short CV
Areas of Research:
Climatology, urbanization and growth models, urban climate, climate change, south Asia urbanization and impacts, sustainability, GIS and remote sensing, climate modeling
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Morse, Wayde
Associate Professor
College of Forestry, Wildlife and Environment
Google Scholar
Short CV
Areas of Research:
Ecosystem services, nature-based recreation, human dimensions of wildlife, interdisciplinary research and linked social ecological systems nationally and in Latin America
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Muntifering, Russell
Professor
Department of Animal Sciences, College of Agriculture
Google Scholar
Short CV
Areas of Research:
Air-quality effects on productivity and nutritive value of herbaceous vegetation for ruminant livestock and wildlife
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Nadolnyak, Denis
Associate Professor
Department of Agricultural Economics and Rural Sociology, College of Agriculture
Google Scholar
Short CV
Areas of Research:
Resource economics,
Environmental Economics Policy,
Climate change
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Narine, Lana
Assistant Professor
College of Forestry, Wildlife and Environment
Google Scholar
Short CV
Areas of Research:
Utilization of remotely sensed data for vegetation studies, with focus on light detection and ranging (lidar) data from sensors on airborne and spaceborne platforms, application of methods, including machine and deep learning, for estimating vegetation biophysical parameters, and development of approaches for characterizing ecosystem structure through geospatial analysis, using remote sensing and GIS
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O’Donnell, Frances
Associate Professor
Department of Civil Engineering, College of Engineering
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Short CV
Areas of Research:
Wetland ecohydrology, green infrastructure for stormwater management, hydrologic modeling, international development
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Ortiz, Brenda
Associate Professor & Extension Specialist
Department of Crop, Soil and Environmental Sciences, College of Agriculture
Google Scholar
Short CV
Areas of Research:
Crop modeling, climate change impacts and adaptation
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Rashotte, Aaron
Professor
Department of Biological Sciences, College of Sciences and Mathematics
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Short CV
Areas of Research:
Development and effects of abiotic stress on plants, with a specifically interest in how the plant hormone cytokinin is involved in these processes
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Sengupta, Aditi
Assistant Professor
Department of Economics, College of Liberal Arts
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Short CV
Areas of Research:
Environmental Economics and Applied Microeconomic Theory
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Shepherd, Stephanie
Assistant Professor
Department of Geosciences, College of Sciences and Mathematics
Google Scholar
Short CV
Areas of Research:
Geomorphology, fluvial geomorphology, landscape evolution, anthropogenic impacts on river systems, GIS applications in geomorphology
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Tian, Di
Associate Professor
Department of Crop, Soil and Environmental Sciences, College of Agriculture
Google Scholar
Short CV
Areas of Research:
Terrestrial hydro-climate observations, forecasts, and projections; climate extremes, impacts, and resilience in agriculture, water resources, and ecosystems; climate-smart land and water management; environmental data analytics and machine learning/deep learning.
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Uddin, Ashraf
Professor
Department of Geosciences, College of Sciences and Mathematics
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Short CV
Areas of Research:
Sedimentary geology, including clastic sedimentology, sedimentary petrology, tectonics and stratigraphy, basin analysis and provenance studies of sequences deposited primarily in orogenic systems
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Valente, Jonathon
Assistant Unit Leader, USGS Alabama Cooperative Fish & Wildlife Research Unit, and Assistant Research Professor, Auburn University, College of Forestry, Wildlife and Environment
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Short CV
Areas of Research:
Biodiversity responses to anthropogenic disturbance; wildlife habitat management; species distribution modeling; development of wildlife sampling and modeling tools
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Vasconcelos, Jose
Professor
Department of Civil Engineering, College of Engineering
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Short CV
Areas of Research:
Modeling of extreme flow events in urban environments, Unsteady Hydraulics
Air/water and sediment/water flows
Surface water hydrology, Water stressors on built infrastructure
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Willoughby, Janna
Assistant Professor, Population and Conservation Genetics
College of Forestry, Wildlife and Environment
Google Scholar
Short CV
Areas of Research:
Linking population responses to habitat change by studying patterns of population genetics, using whole genome sequencing data, bioinformatics, and agent-based models with an emphasis on species with high conservation need
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Yang, Zutao
Assistant Professor
College of Forestry, Wildlife and Environment
Google Scholar
Short CV
Areas of Research:
Climate Change, Carbon, Methane, and Hydrogen Cycling, Urban Ecology, Ecological and Environmental Remote Sensing, Land use land cover changes
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Yue, Zongliang
Assistant Research Professor in Health Outcomes Research and Policy at Harrison College of Pharmacy
Google Scholar
Short CV
Areas of Research:
Biological data mining, systems biology, network biology, artificial intelligence, visual analytics, and translational informatics.
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Zhang, Yaoqi
Alumni Professor, Forest Economics and Management
College of Forestry, Wildlife and Environment
Google Scholar
Short CV
Areas of Research:
Sustainable forest management and rural development, Land use and land cover change, Landscape perception and culture, Private forestry, Environmental history, Non-market valuation of natural resource and environment, Property rights and institutions, International forestry and forest history, Economics and policy of urban forests and ecosystems
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