Research

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) my current position as a postdoctoral researcher as part of the Plant Physiology Unit of the Department of Plant Biology of the University of Barcelona. As a mentor and program plant physiology and remote sensing specialist, I guided students for three summers of SARP through every aspect of combining imaging spectroscopy and thermal remote sensing for plant physiological assessments, including field and image data acquisition, imagery calibration and data pre-processing, and statistical analyses. This is the same synergy of leadership, research, and teaching skills that I 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 Plant Physiology Research Unit at the University of Barcelona (UB) as part of my current research activities.