Undergraduate Research Assistant
Adam majored in Geosciences with an emphasis in Geophysics. His first course at Solano Community College during his sophomore year of high school was Physical Geography which drove his interest in geosciences and desire to learn more about the geologic processes of our world. Adam is currently working with Matlab to estimate glacier melt rates.
Ph.D., Geophysics
As a student working for Dr. HP Marshall, Andrew completed his Geophysics MS in 2013 and Geophysics PhD in 2018. His graduate work focused on the integration of remote sensing, energy balance modeling, and in situ measurements for hydrologic applications in snow-dominated mountain basins. Andrew is now a Research Hydrologist at the USDA-ARS Northwest Watershed Research Center in Boise, Idaho where he works on advancing hydrologic predictions in the semi-arid rangelands and mountain catchments of the Western U.S.
Ph.D., Geosciences
Brent is working on a manuscript that uses our BSU/CRREL helicopter lidar data to estimate optical grain size. The grain size and reflectivity at the surface can help a lot with understanding surface energy balance across the watershed.
Both Brent and Joe are working on another paper, detailing a solution that better solves snow properties from spaceborne hyperspectral data that solves for terrain. This paper is crucial in improving surface energy balance in mountains which have high uncertainty due to steep slopes or complex terrain. This paper will be presented at AGU in Washington DC later this year.
Finally, Brent is putting the finishing touches on a paper that details a "hooking" issue in spaceborne hyperspectral data that leads to errors in resulting snow property maps.
Brent is set to submit his dissertation this month and will be hopefully graduating in the fall term.
Ph.D., Geophysics
Chris was a Ph.D. student in Geophysics for the CryoGARS lab. He is now researching the mechanical proerties of snow at CRREL. To enhance the evaluation of these properties, he has helped developed an innovative non-contact laser ultrasound system (LUS). This advanced system captures ultrasound waveform data at frequencies ranging from tens to hundreds of kHz within a controlled cold laboratory environment. He validated his ultrasound observations through poro-elastic travel time modeling, which was based on both physical and empirical constitutive relationships. Additionally, he compared his findings with previous studies and utilized other recognized snow property measurement systems, including the SnowMicroPen. The experiments focused on artificial snow produced by a snow maker, which allowed him to create homogeneous and isotropic samples comprised of columns, needles, dendrites, and plate snow grains. This controlled setting effectively simulates environmental conditions by maintaining specific temperature and humidity levels.
Technitian
Gabrielle worked as a research technician for BSU and most recently, the 2021 SnowEx campaign during her master's program at MSU. She is currently completing a Master of Science in Snow Science at Montana State University and works for the American Avalanche Institute and Montana Alpine Guides.
Ph.D., Geophysics
Dr. Jukes Liu (they/she) is a postdoc in the CryoGARS glaciology lab whose research focus is the development and adaptation of image analysis / remote sensing and geophysical techniques to measure changes in glacier dynamics. They received their PhD and MSc in Geophysics from Boise State University and have been a part of the CryoGARS glaciology lab since it began in 2019. They have worked on projects related to understanding glacier surges (periodic, order-of-magnitude speedups and advances), marine glacier calving dynamics and resulting iceberg size distributions, and the environmental drivers of glacier terminus retreat. Their research has primarily focused on glacier change in coastal Alaska and Greenland. They have also instructed for Girls* on Ice on Gulkana Glacier in Alaska and have participated in a variety of field-based research projects, mountaineering training, summer schools, and exchange courses in Alaska, Canada, Svalbard, and Greenland.
Undergraduate Lab Assistant
Madeline ("Maddie") was born and raised in Spokane, Washington, and spent many summers exploring the outdoors in the Pacific Northwest. She has since focused her interest on glaciology and understanding how changing ice/snowpack levels are being affected by climate change. Madeline worked on two projects focused on the cryosphere while at Boise State: test applications of ICESat-2 data for mapping seasonal snow as well as the development of a novel pipeline to estimate glacier velocities using Planetscope imagery and NASA's autoRIFT software.
Maddie completed her Bachelor's of Science in Geoscience with an emphasis in Hydrology and a minor in Environmental Studies in spring 2023. She is now working as the Environmental Manager at the Fairchild Air Force Base in Washington.
Visiting Undergraduate Research Assistant, Dartmouth
Maia is an undergraduate at Dartmouth College studying Earth Sciences and Human Centered Design. Her primary research interests are the remote sensing of alpine snow, remote detection of avalanches, and investigating the impact of increased precipitation variability on the frequency, scale, and location of avalanches.
Master’s Student
Phoebs earned her Bachelor’s degree in Planetary Geosciences from Purdue University in 2020 where her research was focused on mapping aqueously altered fractures on Mars. During her senior year, she took geomorphology and remote sensing courses and completed a final project mapping terminus positions of Muir Glacier, Alaska, which sparked an intense interest in glaciology. She wasn’t quite sure what path to take after graduation, so she took a year off and worked as a youth climbing coach at Brooklyn Boulders in Chicago, using any free time she had to climb outdoors at Devil’s Lake in Wisconsin and the Red River Gorge in Kentucky. In June she had the opportunity to go into the field with the Juneau Icefield Research Program.
Phoebe completed her Masters of Earth Science in spring 2023. She doesn't have a permanent job lined-up for immediately after graduation because she is planning on spending some time exploring the world before starting her career.
Ph.D. Student
Scott graduated with a PhD in Geophysics working with Dr HP Marshall on SnowMicroPen measurements, remote sensing campaigns and avalanche monitoring with infrasound. During his work at BSU, Scott worked closely with the Idaho Transportation Department to build and maintain an infrasound based avalanche monitoring system with help from Dr Jeffrey Johnson at BSU. After graduating, Scott was a research hydrologist post-doc at the USDA-ARS Northwest Watershed Research Center in Boise, where he worked with water managers to implement physically based models in real time for water supply and flood forecasting.
In 2020, Scott was able to transition to his own company, Snowbound Solutions, working in the snow and avalanche community as a global leader in avalanche monitoring. Scott built upon his PhD work to make the avalanche monitoring system operational, solving challenges like communications and real time cloud processing. Monitoring systems are currently installed in Utah, Colorado, California, Alaska, and New Zealand. Snowbound also is actively involved with the National Avalanche Center to build and maintain avalanche.org to serve over 18 backcountry avalanche centers and their public users observations and avalanche forecast products.
Ph.D. Student
Tate was a Ph.D. Candidate in Geophysics at Boise State University and an employee of the U.S. Army Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory. Tate attained his Bachelor’s in Geophysics from Texas A&M University and Master’s in Geophysics at Boise State. Tate's research is focused on improving the application of ground-penetrating radar for use in the cryosphere through multichannel array based methods, signal processing, and data inversion.
Ph.D. Student
Zachary's research studied radars and infrasound remote sensing of snow and avalanches. Specifically, he focuses on using car-mounted, airborne, and satellite-based interferometric Synthetic Aperture radar to measure snow properties, comparing measured and model snow temperature gradients in alpine snowpacks, and evaluating the impact of snow burial on avalanche and earthquake infrasound monitoring. He received his master's degree at Montana State University in the Snow and Avalanche laboratory, where he focused on detecting avalanches using SAR satellites.