Shawn C. Kefauver

I am an Associate Professor (Professor Titular d’Universitat) of Plant Physiology and Remote Sensing (Fisiologia i Teledetecció Vegetal) at the University of Barcelona. My current research and teaching interests are plant eco-physiology, climate change, and plant stress, including earth observation science applications for multi-scale scientific research on these topics, with particular emphasis in crop phenotyping in support of breeding for crop resilience. This is a reflection of ten years of related research and educational activities, including (i) the University of California, Davis Center for Spatial Technologies and Remote Sensing (CSTARS), (ii) three summers of airborne science research as a mentor for the NASA/NSERC Student Airborne Research Program (SARP), (iii) a two-year scientific visit with the Center for Research on Ecological Applications and Forestry (CREAF) at the Autonomous University of Barcelona in Spain, and (iv) 12 years at various levels as a postdoc, Adjunct Professor, Senior Lecturer, Senior Researcher and Associate Professor as part of the Plant Physiology Section of the Department of Evolutionary Biology, Ecology and Environmental Sciences of the University of Barcelona.

After undergraduate studies in Biology and Spanish, my MS, PhD dissertation work focused on the use of imaging spectroscopy and GIS for the assessment of air pollution and climate change impacts on forest health in the Mediterranean montane ecosystems of the Sierra Nevada of California and the Pyrenees of Catalonia, Spain. My dissertation work was split between Prof. Susan Ustin at the CSTARS lab at UC Davis and Prof. Josep Peñuelas at the Center For Ecological Research and Forestry Applications (CREAF) of the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB) in Barcelona, Spain.

My keen synergy of leadership, research, and teaching skills was fine-tuned at CSTARS and brought to the CREAF as part of the Fulbright fellowship that paved the way for my PhD dissertation research and is what I bring to the Integrative Crop Physiology Research Group of the Plant Physiology Section at the University of Barcelona (UB) Faculty of Biology over the past decade.

My current research and teaching interests are plant ecophysiology, climate change, agriculture, and forestry, including imaging remote sensing, and GIS applications for multi-scale scientific research on these topics. Besides essential basic research in plant ecophysiology, my current lines of research aim to give new direction to precision agroforestry and scalable high throughput plant phenotyping for improving environmental sustainability and food security related to global climate change. His innovative research pushes beyond the state-of-the-art and advances the efficacy of low-cost alternatives and open-source software for providing tangible improvements in developing countries. I am currently Chair of the PANGEOS COST Action network, the Pan-European Network of Green Deal Agriculture and Forestry Earth Observation Science, leading the EU in phenotyping and precision agriculture with 700+ members from 55+ countries.

My research has been featured in over 100 publications in peer-reviewed journals and have been highly cited. cited 5500+ times, H-index 36, i10 index 61 at Google Scholar, and he has indexed 107 documents and 7 preprints with 255 co-authors, an H-index of 31 with 4000+ citations in SCOPUS.

I feel that my experience in earth observation science, plant eco-physiology and global change ecology can be of a great benefit to humanity through improving our understanding of the forces of change that surround us. Throughout my educational career, I have eagerly sought more experience in international multi-scale scientific research on these topics and have explicitly pursued excellence and opportunity as an educator. With these experiences and interests, my career goals and objectives included continued research on applications of remote sensing and GIS with a strong focus on teaching and mentoring of future generations in the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) fields, focusing on the cross-disciplinary challenges of earth observation science in particular. Thus, as a career goal I would consider a university research professorship or other research position with a strong and explicit focus on mentorship impacts.

As a Professor, Dr. Kefauver has taught in the NASA Student Airborne Research Program (2009-2011) and accredited university courses in Environmental Remote Sensing, Photogrammetry and GIS, Plant Physiology, Environmental Plant Physiology, Plant Breeding, and Precision Agriculture in English, Catalan and Spanish and has contributed to training programs in the United States, Spain, Peru, Kenya, Turkey, Italy, Tunisia, Finland, Chile, and Colombia. He is Coordinator of Environmental Remote Sensing ERASMUS BIP, Grau de Ciencies Ambientals; and Coordinator of Precision Agriculture and Phenotyping, Màster d’Agrobiologia Ambiental. He has directed or tutored five undergraduate senior thesis projects in Spain, Australia, and Colombia, two Erasmus+ MS students, ten MS and five PhD students, and is currently directing two MS and two PhD dissertations. In the past 5 years he has hosted international researchers for self-funded short stays from Turkey, Argelia, the Netherlands, Italy, France, the U.S.A., Chile, Colombia, Uruguay, and Spain. He also serves as Associate Editor of Plant Phenomics (Q1), Forestry Topic and Associate Editor at MDPI Remote Sensing (Q1), Associate Editor in Technical Advances at Frontiers in Plant Science (Q1), Information Processing in Agriculture (Q1), Guest Editor at Precision Agriculture (Q1). He is a Senior Member of the IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society (GRSS).

There are links providing more detail on my dissertation research, collaborators, teaching programs and projects at the bottom of the page.

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