Christoph Nolte
Associate Professor
Christoph is an interdisciplinary conservation scientist interested in understanding and comparing the effectiveness of efforts to protect and restore terrestrial ecosystems. Where do they occur? What do they cost? What difference do they make? Many of his research projects combine remote sensing and “big” spatio-temporal social data on people, policies, and properties with quasi-experimental causal inference and predictive machine learning.
Christoph teaches environmental statistics, economics, data science for conservation decisions, and environmental data synthesis and analysis. He enjoys collaborating with government agencies, donors, land trusts, indigenous governments, and early-career researchers. Before coming to Boston to speak American and Python, he studied in four languages, and pursued conservation research in 24 countries in the Americas, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East.
- PhD, Natural Resources & Environment, University of Michigan
- Post-Doc, Earth System Science, Stanford University
Google Scholar | Research | Publications | Teaching
Information for prospective graduate students
Sachini Ranasinghe
PhD student
Sachini is interested in applying Remote Sensing Techniques for inland water quality monitoring. She uses satellite imagery to study water quality parameters such as suspended particulate matter and algal bloom development in order to provide helpful information for the management and decision-making related to environmental conservation and policy development. Sachini is passionate about studying nature and climate and enjoys diving and traveling in her free time.
- M.Sc Geology, Kent State University
- B.Sc Marine Sciences, University of Ruhuna (Sri Lanka)
Emily French
Graduate research assistant
Emily uses remote sensing techniques and spatio-temporal statistics to investigate landscape-level environmental change. She has a background in Human Geography and is passionate about applied science, cartographic design, and science communication. Before moving to Boston, Emily taught GIS at Middlebury College and worked as a GIS analyst on urban planning, stormwater design, and conservation-focused projects. Her current research uses synthetic aperture radar data to detect deforestation and statistical matching methods to evaluate the effectiveness of conservation policy in the Colombian Andes.
- BA Geography, Middlebury College
Former Lab Members
PhD students
- Dr. Adam Pollack, now postdoctoral scholar at Dartmouth College
- Dr. Ana Reboredo Segovia, now research associate at World Resources Institute
Graduate research assistants
- Hasmitha Rayasam, now project scientist at Satelytics
- Mira Kelly-Fair, now PhD student at Boston University
- Yuhe Chang, now PhD student at Boston University
Visiting postdoctoral students
- Dr. Blake Simmons, now Environmental Social Scientist at Tampa Bay Estuary Program
- Dr. Hongbo Yang, now Researcher at the Chinese Academy of Sciences
- Dr. Qi Zhang, now Research Scientist at the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill
Undergraduate research assistants
- Kaitlyn Lee, now PhD student at Arizona State University
- Shelby Sundquist, now PhD student at North Arizona University
- Becky Petrou O’Rourke
- Colter Schroer
- Caroline Koehl
- Julianne Vaughan
- Katherine Anne
- Shraddha Pingali