Cuizhen Wang (Chair)

Professor in Dept. of Geography, and a Faculty Associate at the Belle W. Baruch Institute for Marine and Coastal Sciences, University of South Carolina. She has strong expertise in bio-environmental remote sensing, with more than 20 years of experiences in image analysis, modeling and application for environmental changes and, specifically, marsh habitat assessment of coastal wetlands in recent years. Dr. Wang is a Subject Matter Expert (SME) in Remote Sensing & Image Analysis of the U.S. Geospatial Intelligence Foundation (USGIF), and has built into international research network via collaborative activities in China, Thailand, and Japan.

Susan L. Cutter (Co-Chair)

Carolina Distinguished Professor of Geography, Director of the HVRI, Director of the IRDR ICoE-VaRM, an elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), and received the Lifetime Achievement Award, the top honor from the Association of American Geographers. Her primary research interests are disaster vulnerability/resilience science and in measuring losses from disasters. Leading field teams to study long term recovery from a variety of hurricanes and floods since Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Dr. Cutter has provided expert testimony to US federal agencies and Congress on hazards and vulnerability, emergency management, disaster resilience, and disaster recovery.

Li Zhang (Co-Chair)

Professor at the Institute of Remote Sensing and Digital Earth (RADI), Chinese Academy of Sciences. She is the Co-chair of DBAR-COAST Working Group and Vice Director of Key Laboratory of Earth Observation, Hainan Province, China. She has been leading and participating in ten more National and Provincial Projects, including International Cooperation Projects. She has published more than 90 scientific journal papers.Dr. Zhang’s research interests are carbon modeling, ecosystem performance, vegetation monitoring, and land-surface dynamics in coastal zone. Dr. Zhang will coordinate the ICoE-Coast joint activities between USC and RADI.

Michael E. Hodgson

Professor in Dept. of Geography. His research interests are broadly in geographical information science with particular interest in the use of remote sensing approaches (e.g. LiDAR) for environmental problems. His funded research has focused on the development of innovative approaches and techniques for rapidly or more accurately extracting information from imagery and geospatial data. Recent research has utilized survey methods, cognitive studies, and GIS-based modeling for probing theoretical questions and pragmatic solutions to geographic problems.

Kirstin Dow

Carolina Trustees Professor, Lead Investigator, Carolina’s Integrated Sciences and Assessment. She is a social environmental geographer focusing on understanding climate impacts, vulnerability, and adaptation. Kirstin was recently named as Fellow to the 2016 inaugural class of AAAS Leshner Leadership Institute Public Engagement with Science. Dow serves as principal investigator of the Carolinas Integrated Sciences and Assessments, an interdisciplinary research team that bridges climate science and decision making.

Jean T. Ellis

Associate professor and holds a joint appointment in the Dept. of Geography and the School of Earth, Ocean, and Environment, and is a Faculty Associate with the Belle W. Baruch Institute for Marine and Coastal Sciences, University of South Carolina. Her research interests are coastal and aeolian geomorphology and the impact of humans on the coastal environment, with current project focusing on geomorphic impacts of the beach-dune system post hurricane and small-scale aeolian sand transport using in situ and remote sensors.

Diansheng Guo

Associate Professor at the Department of Geography, University of South Carolina. He received a B.S. (1996) degree in geography from the Peking University, an M.S. (1999) in GIS and cartography from the Chinese Adademy of Sciences (CAS), and a Ph.D (2003) in geography from the Pennsylvania State University. Dr. Guo served on the program committee of the Eighth and Ninth International Conferences on Infomration Visualization.

Zhenlong Li

Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography at the University of South Carolina. He received Ph.D. in Earth Systems and Geoinformation Sciences from George Mason University in 2015. His primary research field is GIScience with a focus on big data processing and analytics, spatial computing, and geospatial cyberinfrastructure with applications to disaster management, climate data analysis, human mobility, and public health.Currently, He serves on the Editorial Boards of ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information and PLOS ONE, as Vice Chair of the Association of American Geographers Cyberinfrastructure Specialty Group.

Dwayne Porter

Professor, Associate Chair and Director of Graduate Studies, Environmental Health Sciences, Arnold School of Public Health, joint appointment with Baruch Institute for Marine and Coastal Sciences, and Director of the NOAA NERRS Centralized Data Management Office (CDMO), Georgetown, SC. Dr. Porter’s research focuses on the use of the tools of Geographic Information Sciences (GISciences) to develop and apply spatial models to study the impacts of anthropogenic and physiographic influences to coastal resources, land use and land cover patterns and how changes in land-use activities impact estuarine health and associated human health concerns.

James T. Morris

Distinguished Professor of Biological and Marine Sciences and the former Director of the Belle W. Baruch Institute for Marine and Coastal Sciences, University of South Carolina, with significant expertise in wetland/estuarine ecology, biogeochemistry, ecology and modeling. Dr. Morris established the internationally recognized Marsh Equilibrium Model (MEM), which simulates carbon sequestration and marsh responses to sea level rise. His work has been long supported by federal agencies such as NSF, NOAA, USGS, etc.

Silvia Piovan

Tenured Researcher in Geography in the Department of Historical Geographical and Antiquity Sciences (DiSSGeA), University of Padova  (Italy).  She is also Aggregate Professor in “Cartography and GIS” and Instructor in “GIS for Local Development”. Dr. Piovan was a Visiting Associate Professor at the University of South Carolina (USC) in 2015 – 2018 and was appointed Affiliate Professor in the Department of Geography, USC in 2017. Her research interests are focused on geo-historical evolution and interactions between hydrography and human activities in alluvial plains, wetlands, floods and ecosystem services in the Adige-Po plain.