Project Work in GIS and Remote Sensing

Dr. Magaly Koch is a remote sensing geologist with more than 30 years of experience in applied environmental research, including groundwater resources in drylands, land degradation problems, natural hazards, and human impact in environmental change. She is particularly interested in projects addressing global water scarcity and flooding problems as related to extreme weather conditions through an interdisciplinary approach. Koch is an expert in the application of geospatial technologies in natural and applied sciences and has extensive managerial experience in conducting international and multidisciplinary research projects in many parts of the world. She has supervised numerous international projects in the Middle East, Africa, Europe, and East Asia. She has served as a consultant to the United Nations Geospatial Information Center in Brindisi, Italy, in a project related to groundwater assessment in Darfur, Sudan. Most of these projects required her to run capacity building workshops to introduce stakeholders, professionals, and students to the techniques and applications of geospatial technology in land and water resources studies. Koch is co-author of the textbook Processing of Remotely-Sensed Images: An Introduction, Fifth Edition (2022), with Paul M. Mather. Koch graduated from the University of Cologne, Germany with a MSc in geology. Her PhD research on the use of remote sensing in ground water studies was undertaken at Boston University. She was awarded a Marie Curie Fellowship by the European Union to undertake post-doctoral research at the Earth Science Institute, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC), Barcelona, Spain. More recently, she was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship to undertake teaching and research activities at Tohoku University in Japan. She is currently a research associate professor at the Remote Sensing Center, Boston University, and is a lecturer in civil and environmental engineering at Tufts University.

Jeff Blossom is the GIS service manager at the Center for Geographic Analysis at Harvard University. Blossom has been working in the geographic information system (GIS) industry for over twenty years as a technician, analyst, developer, manager, and educator. He focuses on developing tools and methods that can be used by all to teach geographic concepts and convey geographic information. Prior to joining the Center, Blossom was the GIS photogrammetry administrator for the city and county of Denver and served as chairman of Denver's GIS steering committee. Before that, Blossom served as a GIS analyst for the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico and the United States Geographical Survey in Lakewood, Colorado. He received a master's from the University of Denver.