Welcome to Geosense!
GeoSenSE
(Geospatial Sensing and Sampling of the Environment) is a growing and diverse group of active researchers, faculty, and students developing science and technology for intelligent environmental sensing and sampling including in-situ and remotely sensed measurements complemented by physics- and machine learning-based modeling.
GeoSenSE Faculty
Dr. Álvarez Rueda
Laura Alvarez is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Earth, Environmental and Resource Science, and Adjunct Faculty at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering in the University of Texas at El Paso. She is a former NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellow, affiliated with the Center for Autonomous Sensing and Sampling (CASS) under the College of Atmospheric and Geographic Sciences at the University of Oklahoma and the River Dynamics Research Group under the Department of Geography at Simon Fraser University. Dr. Alvarez is a Civil Engineer from the National University of Colombia (2007) with a Master's (2010) and a Ph.D. in Geography from Arizona State University (ASU) (2015). In the years that followed, Dr. Alvarez held a position as a Lecturer in the Department of Geography and Environmental Sustainability at the University of Oklahoma (2015-2017). She joined UTEP in 2020 and she is the co-director of the GeoSenSE (Geospatial Sensing and Sampling for the Environment) Research Lab. Dr. Alvarez has been the awardee of the NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship under the Division of Earth Science and the Dissertation Completion Fellowship at ASU. Other awards include the ASU Graduate Fellowship and Anthony Brazel Research Exam Award.
Broadly, her research focuses on the use of physically-based models and autonomous systems as tools to understand the fluid dynamics and macro-turbulence in relationship with sediment transport and bed evolution in large-scale scale river systems. Most recently, Dr. Alvarez has been working on adapting algorithms of path planning for reconnaissance by applying machine learning in the development of autonomous robots, such as autonomous boats, Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS), and Unmanned Surface Vehicles (USV) to deeply understand water-mediated environments, including bathymetry, flow features, object recognition, and material classifications. This technology can potentially be transferable to other platforms and robots.
Dr. Moreno Ramírez
Dr. Moreno’s research efforts focus on advancing the study of the links between water, energy, and biogeochemical cycles across a wide range of Spatio-temporal scales and regions. He emphasizes the study of hydro-systems under natural variability and anthropogenic change that face new challenges for society's water security and extreme events prevention and forecasting. His study topics span from atmospheric science, surface water, and groundwater hydrology through complementary sciences like hydrometeorology, hydroclimatology, ecohydrology, surface hydrology, hydro informatics, and hydrologic modeling. His lab uses tools that combine field observations from the atmosphere, surface, and underground, with remotely sensed information from satellites, radars, and unmanned systems, and high-performance, distributed hydrological and machine learning modeling to develop platforms for decision-making under uncertainty.
GeoSenSE - Earth Day Celebration
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