Current team members
Peter R. Nelson, Ph.D
Founder and Principal
Peter came to remote sensing through vegetation ecology, primarily through lichens (algal/fungal symbioses). He started LECOSPEC with the goal to apply reflectance spectroscopy in solving problems in agriculture, forestry and any natural resource management issues. He still serves as an associate faculty advising students using on imaging and scanning spectroscopy.
Founder and Principal
Peter came to remote sensing through vegetation ecology, primarily through lichens (algal/fungal symbioses). He started LECOSPEC with the goal to apply reflectance spectroscopy in solving problems in agriculture, forestry and any natural resource management issues. He still serves as an associate faculty advising students using on imaging and scanning spectroscopy.
Kenneth Bundy
Software Engineer
Ken and Peter first worked together while Peter was at the Schoodic Institute and Ken was at the University of Maine. Together, they worked on taking the original ideas that Kevaughan and Peter developed for hyperspectral image processing and refactoring their code to be faster and better, culminating in a paper mapping plant functional types in Alaska. Since then, Ken and Peter have been building a autencoder and vision transformer for hyperspectral image processing.
Software Engineer
Ken and Peter first worked together while Peter was at the Schoodic Institute and Ken was at the University of Maine. Together, they worked on taking the original ideas that Kevaughan and Peter developed for hyperspectral image processing and refactoring their code to be faster and better, culminating in a paper mapping plant functional types in Alaska. Since then, Ken and Peter have been building a autencoder and vision transformer for hyperspectral image processing.
Evan Tenorio
Analyst
Evan comes to LECOSPEC from Alabama A&M University where he recently graduated with a degree in Natural Resources, co-advised by Peter. His project involved using LiDAR and hyperspectral data (the latter provided by LECOSPEC) to map forest attributes at the Paint Rock Experimental Forest. He is helping LECOSPEC on data formatting and summaries.
Analyst
Evan comes to LECOSPEC from Alabama A&M University where he recently graduated with a degree in Natural Resources, co-advised by Peter. His project involved using LiDAR and hyperspectral data (the latter provided by LECOSPEC) to map forest attributes at the Paint Rock Experimental Forest. He is helping LECOSPEC on data formatting and summaries.
past team members
Kevaughan Smith
Kevaughan was one of Peter's undergraduate students while he was a University of Maine-Fort Kent student. He was the core individual who learned to operate the spectrometers, both in the air and on the ground and write code to analyze these data under Peter's guidance. Since graduating, Kevaughan has moved on to working in IT for a Maine company.
Kevaughan was one of Peter's undergraduate students while he was a University of Maine-Fort Kent student. He was the core individual who learned to operate the spectrometers, both in the air and on the ground and write code to analyze these data under Peter's guidance. Since graduating, Kevaughan has moved on to working in IT for a Maine company.
Jane Pettit
Jane was one of Peter's undergraduate students while he was a University of Maine-Fort Kent student. She was instrumental in keeping the lab logistics organized, reaching out to potential partners to see if spectroscopy could be useful for their applications as well as doing field work now and then. Since graduating, Jane has moved on to working for a Maine company working with plants and chemical quantification.
Jane was one of Peter's undergraduate students while he was a University of Maine-Fort Kent student. She was instrumental in keeping the lab logistics organized, reaching out to potential partners to see if spectroscopy could be useful for their applications as well as doing field work now and then. Since graduating, Jane has moved on to working for a Maine company working with plants and chemical quantification.
Catherine Chan
Catherine was a Master’s student at the University of Maine’s School of Forest Resources co-advised by Peter Nelson. Her project involved detection of health stress in different systems; drought stress in wild blueberry vegetation through multi-temporal observations, disease in potato fields, and vigor classification of ash trees with emerald ash borer (EAB) infestation. She is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Nebraska - Lincoln with Dr. John Gamon.
Catherine was a Master’s student at the University of Maine’s School of Forest Resources co-advised by Peter Nelson. Her project involved detection of health stress in different systems; drought stress in wild blueberry vegetation through multi-temporal observations, disease in potato fields, and vigor classification of ash trees with emerald ash borer (EAB) infestation. She is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Nebraska - Lincoln with Dr. John Gamon.