About Me

Hello!

I am Evan Hockridge, a student at Purdue University studying Unmanned Aerial Systems.

I am particularly interested in utilizing unmanned aircraft as a remote sensing method in ecological contexts. I tend to be cordial towards forested and coastal ecosystems. I enjoy research questions pertaining to ecosystem services and functions, landscape ecology, ecosystem management and sustainability, and ecosystem resilience to pressures such as climate change.

So far, I have worked as a researcher on a variety of projects. Some relate more to my aviation background such as using UAS as a aerospace warehousing tool or analyzing the efficiency of  electric motors as a function of power input, propeller size, and propeller pitch. However, most involve combining both my interests in the form of projects such as measuring critical forestry metrics for hardwood forest inventory and analyzing the impacts of tides on apparent giant kelp canopy. I invite you to check out this blog's research page for more information.

Ultimately, drone remote sensing provides a means for extremely high resolution remote sensing (temporal and spatial) at a very low cost. This simple fact democratizes remote sensing for many researchers around the globe, a critical capability for managing natural landscapes in an ever changing world. I plan on contributing to this understanding.

Graduation Update: Plans for the Future (May, 2019)

This page was initially written in August 2018, my first week of my final undergraduate year. This update is being written the April 29th, just before graduate in May. Throughout the past several months, my research interests have been refined and my plans post graduation have been confirmed. The graduate school search was exhausting, but I am happy to say I will be joining the graduate student community at Harvard's Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology. Starting as a PhD student, I will be working with ecologist Dr. Andrew Davies as my adviser. Under his guidance, I will be learning to become an ecologist focused on studying the interactions between animals and landscapes. I am especially interested in understanding how inter-species interactions drive ecosystem functions that shape landscapes, and how alterations to those interactions may propagate into landscape structure and function. The system I will be working in specifically has not yet been sorted out, but it will take place somewhere on the African continent, likely in South Africa. Once I have a website or blog for my graduate studies, I will link it here.

Harvard email: evanhockridge@g.harvard.edu