About Me

Hello! My name is Elena, I am a master's student living just outside of Seattle with my partner, Nathan, and our pets, Scooby and Twist. The four of us moved to Washington after Nathan and I graduated from Lehigh University, where I earned my B.S. in Earth and Environmental Science in 2020. Currently, I am finishing my master's degree in GIS (Geographic Information Systems) from Penn State University. 

My hobbies include reading, cooking, and recently I have started gardening! Of course, my free time mostly belongs to my pets, and I love going camping with Scooby and taking Twist for trail rides whenever possible. 

My research at Penn State is an analysis of the relationship between contrail cloud coverage and atmospheric weather conditions in the Pacific Northwest. 

I am thankful to have had a diverse academic background consisting of a wide range of coursework at both Lehigh and Penn State. As an undergraduate, I was able to take courses in hydrogeology, limnology, minerology, ecology, volcanology, geomorphology, and but of course my favorite class was Lehigh's Field Camp! As a graduate student, my coursework has included topics like topographic mapping with lidar, remote sensing, programming and software development (mostly using R and Python), and geospatial project management.