Davis lab dinner, Spring 2023. Pictured left to right: Endi Kebede, Bhoktear Khan, Nusrat Mohana (honorary member), Shradda Davis (honorary member), Kevin Oluoch, Michael Eruaga, Huiwen Bai (honorary member), Dongyang Wei, Afia Sarwar, Kopo Oromeng, Kyle Davis, Piyush Mehta, Hanan Ameer, Ali Ameer (honorary member)
PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR
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Kyle F. Davis
Dr. Davis is an Assistant Professor at the University of Delaware in the Department of Geography and Spatial Sciences and the Department of Plant and Soil Sciences and a Resident Faculty in the UD Data Science Institute. His work focuses on food systems, water sustainability, and global environmental change. His current research in India, Nigeria, China, and the US combines environmental, economic, and social considerations with direct stakeholder engagement to inform agricultural decision making and to improve nutrition, environmental sustainability, and climate adaptation strategies. He also explores other human-environment interactions through projects on: the environmental and livelihoods impacts of large-scale land investments; variability and shock propagation through food trade networks; the relationship between human migration and global environmental change; and farmer coping strategies for climate variability and extremes. Prior to joining UD in 2019, he was a Data Science Fellow and Earth Institute Fellow at Columbia University (New York) and a NatureNet Science Fellow with The Nature Conservancy. He earned his PhD in Environmental Sciences with a focus on Hydrology from the University of Virginia and is a proud graduate of UD. |
GRADUATE STUDENTS
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Hanan Abou Ali
Hanan is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Geography and Spatial Sciences at the University of Delaware. Her research interests include applying remote sensing and statistical methods to crop mapping, yield prediction, food security, and sustainable agriculture practices. Hanan has a BS in Surveying Engineering from the Lebanese International University (LIU) where she worked on studying errors in maps. Afterwards, Hanan received her MS in Geographic Information Science from Idaho State University funded through the Fulbright scholarship program. Her research focused on using satellite imagery to study potato crops in Lebanon and Idaho. Prior to arriving at UD, Hanan was an instructor at the Surveying Engineering department at LIU, where she taught multiple courses and advised senior students on their graduation projects. |
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Endalkachew Kebede
Endalkachew is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Geography and Spatial Sciences at the University of Delaware. His research interests include water-food-energy nexus, hydro-economic modeling, crop water productivity modeling, and remote sensing applications on water resources. He is currently working under the supervision of Dr. Kyle Davis on updating global maps of irrigated and rainfed areas. Endalkachew received his BS in Soil and Water Engineering and Management from Haramaya University. He holds his first MS in Irrigation Engineering from Haramaya University, where he worked on comparing hydrological models under climate change. He also earned his second MS in Water Science and Engineering from IHE Delft Institute for Water Education. His research focused on the geomorphological adaptation of the Lower Zambezi River under dam construction using numerical modeling. He has more than eight years of experience as a lecturer and researcher at Debre Tabor University, Woldia University, and Bahir dar Polytechnic College. |
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Bhoktear Khan
Bhoktear is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Geography and Spatial Sciences at the University of Delaware. He is interested in agricultural crop mapping, crop modeling and yield forecasting using GIS and Remote Sensing techniques. His current research includes irrigated crop area mapping in Nigeria with a wider application in other irrigating areas of the world. Prior to coming to UD he worked as a GIS analyst in Roads and Highways Department of Bangladesh. Bhoktear holds a BS degree in Agriculture from Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman Agricultural University (BSMRAU). He received his MS degree in Agroforestry and Environment with a major focus in GIS and Remote Sensing from BSMRAU. He studied Rohingya people’s migration and relocation in Bangladesh using geospatial techniques. |
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Piyush Mehta
Piyush is a PhD student in Department of Geography at the University of Delaware. He is drawn to sustainable agriculture and land use dynamics. At present, he is interested in mapping crop wise irrigated areas globally using geospatial techniques and machine learning algorithms that can be used for water resource planning and management. Previously, Piyush worked as a Research Associate in the Bharti Institute of Public Policy at the Indian School of Business (ISB). He was part of the Forest Governance team which works on various projects that focus on upscaling community forest resource rights (CFR) recognition. Piyush holds a Masters in Environmental Economics from Madras School of Economics and a Bachelors in Physics from University of Delhi. |
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Kevin Ong'are Oluoch
Kevin is a PhD student in Geography at the University of Delaware. He is passionate about optimizing agronomy. In the Davis Research Laboratory, his research centers on corn yield quantification and the associated socio-economic factors in East Africa's smallholder farms. He was a Geospatial and Data management consultant for CIMMYT-Nairobi (International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center), analyzing socio-economic and agronomy data. He is enthusiastic about data science. He holds a BSc in Geospatial Engineering from the University of Nairobi. |
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Afia Sarwar
Afia is a PhD student in the Department of Geography and Spatial Sciences at the University of Delaware. She is interested in climate change, food security, crop modeling, and forecasting future crop yield using GIS and Remote Sensing techniques (GIS/RS). Afia graduated from the University of Peshawar with a BS in Geographic Information System and Remote Sensing. She then earned her MS in the same field from National University of Sciences and Technology (NUST), Pakistan. Her study focused on the effects of climate change on wheat phenology and yield in rainfed and irrigated regions of Pakistan. During her MS, she worked as a research assistant on a project funded by ZHWA Zurich University of Applied Sciences, Switzerland on the impacts of climate vulnerabilities on crop production and agriculture water resources management in Indus Basin, Pakistan. |
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Dongyang Wei
Dongyang is a PhD candidate in the Department of Geography and Spatial Sciences at the University of Delaware. With a focus on the intersection of food security and climate change, her research utilizes a combination of advanced techniques including large-scale data analysis, statistical modeling, machine learning, and geospatial methods to gain a comprehensive understanding of the challenges faced in developing sustainable food systems. Her research projects include mitigating food production shocks, investigating the transitions in dietary nutritional quality, and studying the impact of increasing atmospheric CO2 on crop nutrient content. Through her work, Dongyang is striving to bring attention to important issues and identify innovative solutions that will help ensure food security for future generations. Before joining the University of Delaware, Dongyang gained valuable experience as a Research Associate at the University of Reading in the UK, where she applied her programming and mathematical skills to study the relationships between environmental and climatic variables and conduct pollen-based paleo-climate reconstruction. Dongyang achieved a Master’s degree in Ecosystem and Environmental Change from Imperial College London (UK) and a Bachelor's degree from Shanghai Jiao Tong University (China). |
UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCHERS
The lab group always welcomes interest from enthusiastic undergraduates. If you are interested in undergraduate research within the group, please feel free to contact Dr. Davis directly.
LAB GROUP ALUMNI
Leslie Guadalupe Castro (BS Chemistry, Columbia University)
Alex Checchi (BS)
Sam Becton (BS)
Spencer Hanggodo (BS GIScience and Environmental Data Analytics)
Tyler Sharretts (MS Geography, 2021)
Michael Eruaga (MS Geography, 2023)
Carissa Johnson (BS Environmental Science, 2023)
Alex Checchi (BS)
Sam Becton (BS)
Spencer Hanggodo (BS GIScience and Environmental Data Analytics)
Tyler Sharretts (MS Geography, 2021)
Michael Eruaga (MS Geography, 2023)
Carissa Johnson (BS Environmental Science, 2023)
LAB GATHERINGS
Davis lab dinner, Fall 2021. Pictured left to right: Hanan Abou Ali, Piyush Mehta, MoMo, Dongyang Wei, Huiwen Bai (honorary member), Michael Eruaga, Sasquatch, Kevin Oluoch, Kopo Oromeng, Nusrat Mohana (honorary member), Bhoktear Khan, Kyle Davis
Davis lab dinner, Spring 2021. Pictured left to right: Ali Ameer (honorary member), Hanan Abou Ali, Dongyang Wei, Huiwen Bai (honorary member), Kevin Oluoch, Sasquatch, Kyle Davis, MoMo, Piyush Mehta, Tyler Sharretts, Kopo Oromeng, Bhoktear Khan
Davis lab social-distancing picnic, Fall 2020. Pictured left to right: Kopo Oromeng, Piyush Mehta, Kyle Davis, Hanan Abou Ali, Dongyang Wei, Huiwen Bai (honorary member). Not pictured: Tyler Sharretts, Sam Becton, Leslie Castro
