Justin Fain is doing spatial data analysis.
I build tools to answer questions by combining remote sensing, spatial vector, and tabular data. I love to pull techniques from outside the geographic discipline and adapt them to solve interesting problems. I want to apply a bit of lateral thinking to improve existing systems or create something entirely new.
What I Do
Past work has included tracking air and groundwater pollution, predicting future fire risks, assessing drivers of food insecurity, and many other grant-funded projects. I've worked under grants from NASA, NOAA, USDA, NIFA, AMAP, and others.Most recently I developed a fast and accurate model to improve fire emission source attribution in the Arctic. By honing-in on what is burning we can improve upon existing fire emission models and make better predictions about climate and health impacts.
How I Do It
I am dedicated to open source software and believe that we should all strive to make science more accessible. Although I was trained in ESRI and ENVI tools, their closed nature makes them antithetical to the goals of open science.I mainly code in R but I have experience with SQL, Python, and JavaScript. I also have some limited experience in SAS, an interest in Julia, and have played around with the likes of Haskell and a handful of other languages just for fun.
What I'm Up To Now
I'm am a researcher at NASA Ames Research Center and the Bay Area Environmental Research Institute. I am a trainer with the NASA Applied Remote Sensing Training program under the Ecological Conservation team. I'm engaged in numerous other projects and missions and always adding more.
Education
B.A. Urban & Regional Planning - Miami University
M.A. Geography - Miami University
GIS Certificate - Miami University
Please note that my GitHub has been dead for some time as I work in private repos and internal systems.
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