I am originally from Ames, Iowa – home to Iowa State University where I received a B.S. in Meteorology and a minor in Agronomy. While attending school, I worked as an undergraduate research assistant for a variety of lab groups in the Agronomy department and gained experience working with corn, soybean, miscanthus, and sorghum crops, as well as processing soil samples for monitoring the health and growth of field crops around Iowa. As a member of the lab, I was able to combine my passions of weather and agriculture through instrumentation. I installed and maintained micrometeorological weather stations to collect data from inside corn and soybean fields to measure each crops evapotranspiration. I was then able to calculate and compare the differences in water use efficiency between them for my Senior Thesis project.

These experiences and interests drew me to UW-Madison as a research intern in the Kucharik Lab. My current research is quite broad but is mainly focused in the Central Sands region of Wisconsin looking at cropping rotations and water quality. I also maintain and download temperature and relative humidity sensors around the Madison area to monitor its urban heat island effect.