The poles of the earth have wandered. The equator has apparently moved. The continents, perched on their plates, are thought to have been carried so very far and to be going in so many directions that it seems an act of almost pure hubris to assert that some landmark of our world is fixed at 73 degrees 57 minutes and 53 seconds west longitude and 40 degrees 51 minutes and 14 seconds north latitude–a temporary description, at any rate, as if for a boat on the sea. - John McPhee
Hey, I’m Ben. Formerly a scientist within the Remote Sensing and Earth Surface Processes group at the University of Potsdam in Germany. Now working at the University of Washington in the Terrain Analysis and Cryosphere Observation Lab (With a few years in sub-arctic Nome, Alaska along the way.)
I have my feet in a few worlds. Aside from my science jobs, I also work for First Draft, developing a web application development course for beginner programmers. This has been my primary focus for the past few years.
I’m open to consulting, and have run workshops for GIS mapping. My inbox is open if you want to get in touch about workshops, projects, or anything else!
My background is in geology, including field observations and mapping, but I specialized in remote sensing and geomorphology. I use satellites, drones, handheld cameras, geodetic measurements, and a lot of computer coding to investigate the driving forces and resulting shape of the earth’s surface.
Lately, my focus has shifted more towards education, both in the context of developing accessible and inclusive learning experiences for beginner programmers, and in developing open source software for geoscience.
You can check out my GitHub for code snippets and inspiration. I enjoy science communication and get my fix via instagram.
On this site, my research page contains some of the science I’ve done in the past, with a few links to the publications that came out of it. You can also find my current CV, and some regrettably infrequent blog posts.
