What or who drew you to focus on coastal research? 

On a personal level, I’ve lived by a coast most of my life and always enjoyed them recreationally. Beaches are beautiful. Academically, I was drawn to coastal research due to the dynamic nature of coastal systems and the ecological services they provide.

On a practical level, I know I work best in a field that is challenging, impactful, offers many different facets to explore, and invites interdisciplinary thought. Coastal engineering offers exactly that. Ultimately, I believe it’s important work and I am having fun doing it.

Did you do any research in undergrad? What were those experiences like? 

I have a fairly diverse background. Early on, I studied mathematics and later made a switch to civil engineering, mostly from a desire to be able to help impact communities now. In mathematics I primary worked in the areas graph theory and combinatorics where I researched problems relating to dessin d’enfant and latin squares, two mathematical objects. During my master’s degree I produced a few original proofs relating to latin squares. I still really enjoy the reading math texts today. During my undergraduate in civil engineering, I researched the rheological effects of salt water on asphalt binders. Not much came from this study, expect that personally it helped me reiterate to myself how much I enjoy research. I’m really excited about my research now for many reasons, but one is that I believe it gives me the opportunity to blend all my prior experiences and passions.

What are you researching (general project information)? 

I am developing a low-cost, real-time, coastal monitoring network. The network will consist of devices that measure physio-chemical water quality parameters, tide levels, and wave heights. These devices transmit data in real-time to a cloud-hosted database and website using the Long-Range Wide Area Network (LoRaWAN). The devices themselves are created using Arduino microcontrollers and compatible sensors, making all components low-cost and open source.

A key component of this project is ensuring others can build these devices and expand the network to their own communities. To do this, I will be releasing all code and developing how-to guides showing others how they can build these devices and add them to the network. Hopefully, by making this technology open source it will enable

an increase in data availability in coastal communities.

Many other fields, such as the finance and software industry, have been able to leverage machine learning, artificial intelligence, and other data-driven techniques due to an abundant amount of real-time data. I hope to apply similar approaches to coastal water quality monitoring. Specifically, I plan to use the real-time data from our network to make real-time predictions of fecal coliform levels from low-cost, physio-chemical water quality parameters. Additionally, I plan to create simple threshold-based alerts, where text message or email warnings are sent when a parameter like dissolved oxygen or pH exceeds, or drops below, a critical threshold.

Why is monitoring different parameters in water bodies important to you? 

I believe data is central to defending against and understanding the consequence of coastal threats. Increased data availability can help coastal policymakers, researchers,

and practitioners make more informed decisions and gain insights — such as identifying pollution sources, evaluating salt marsh erosion rates, optimizing coastal armoring designs, or detecting water quality hazards. Currently, coastal monitoring network’s often have low spatial resolution, with too few monitoring stations or one’s that are too far away from a study location. This lack of localized data can lead to data being inapplicable or inaccurate for a study area.

An alternative to using coastal monitoring networks is to deploy your own in-situ monitoring devices. The primary barrier of commercial in-situ monitoring devices is their high cost. This problem is worsened when you consider that many applications require multiple devices, making this route financial unfeasible to many. Additionally, commercial in-situ monitoring device often lack real-time capabilities making their data inaccessible while deployed.

Monitoring different parameters in water bodies, and more specifically giving others a feasible way to do the same, is important to me because I believe increased data will lead to more resilient coasts and improved public safety.