Instructor · Environmental Hazards Modeler · Geospatial Data Scientist
CIRES Earth and ESIIL Labs · University of Colorado Boulder
I am a hydrogeologist and environmental hazards modeler working at CIRES Earth and ESIIL Labs at the University of Colorado Boulder. As part of the Education Team, I am one of the instructors for our Graduate Earth Data Science Certificate program, ESIIL Stars, and the Data Short Course. I also participate in the many Hackathons we offer throughout the year. My work focuses on predictive modeling, hydrogeologic analysis, and geospatial data science. I build reproducible computational pipelines that translate environmental complexity into actionable models.
Current CIRES-funded research includes Shadow Ecology - a deep learning method I'm developing to investigate whether model residuals can be leveraged to improve predictions in data- and sensor-poor regions. I am also an educator at Earth Lab and ESIIL; educational materials, including data cubes and several modeling pipelines I've taught and/or developed can be found here: ESIIL Education.
I am also the co-owner and primary data scientist of Daear Consulting, LLC, currently partnering with Oglala Lakota College on a USDA-NIFA funded grant to build hydrologic and agricultural data cubes for analysis, teaching, and Tribal data sovereignty workflows.
As a Tribal college graduate and former Tribal college faculty member at Oglala Lakota College, I am committed to sovereignty-aligned workflows and reproducible science that centers Tribal partners in environmental research.
| Focus | Featured work | What it offers |
|---|---|---|
| Teach | Systems at Play · Scientists Who Code | Accessible, reusable computational learning materials that connect code, modeling, and systems thinking for students and interdisciplinary learners. |
| Research | Shadow Ecology · He Sapa Twin | Examples of geospatial and remote-sensing analysis, with an emphasis on reproducible workflows and interpretable computational methods. |
| Collaborate | Daear Consulting · Oglala Lakota College | Partnership-oriented data science and educational projects grounded in reproducibility, practical learning, and sovereignty-aligned environmental research. |
- Hydrogeologic and Earth systems modeling
- Fire–vegetation predictive modeling
- Multispectral remote sensing integration
- Geospatial structure in model residuals
- Geospatial data engineering & data cubes
- Environmental hazard risk modeling
- Reproducible computational workflows
- Tribal Data Science
- Tribal Data Sovereignty
I created a series exploring common gaming algorithms and systems design concepts here: Systems at Play
Languages & EnvironmentsPythonRCFortranBashSQL/MySQLJupyterVS CodeLinux
GeospatialArcGIS ProQGISGDAL/OGRRasterioGeoPandasShapelyFionaPyProjrtreeOSMnxH3GeoPyGeoTesseraGeoTessellationContextilyPyDeckDatashaderENVIEarthPyRemote SensingAlphaEarth Foundations
Data EngineeringPandasNumPyXarrayDaskZarrAPIsSTACData CubesCloud-native data structuresWorkflow automation
Machine LearningScikit-learnPyTorchTensorFlowFuzzy Machine LearningStatistical ModelingBayesian MethodsPredictive ModelingFeature EngineeringDeep LearningOpenCLIP / RemoteCLIPTorchGeo
Cloud & Data Access InfrastructureAWS (S3, EC2)DockerHPC/SLURMCyVersePlanetary ComputerVSI/VSICURLearthaccessCloud-native geospatial workflowsVersion-controlled reproducible pipelines
Scientific Computing, Modeling & AnalysisSciPyStatsmodelsParallel ComputingLarge Geospatial DatasetsEnvironmental ModelingNetworkXMODFLOWVisual MODFLOWParFlowAQTESOLVStella 7CESM
VisualizationMatplotlibSeabornHoloViews/hvPlotFoliumTableau
Remote Sensing & Earth ObservationLandsatSentinel-2MODISEMIT HyperspectralCopernicusNLCDSSURGONHDNWISNOAA3DEP/LiDAR
Version ControlGitGitHub
PlatformsLinuxWindowsHPC (CURC, ACCESS)Cloud (AWS S3, CyVerse)
| Role | Description |
|---|---|
| Instructor | Earth Data Science Graduate Certificate courses, ESIIL Stars, Data Short Course CU Boulder |
| Principal Investigator | Shadow Ecology: Model Residuals as Signal, CIRES, CU Boulder |
| Owner / Data Scientist | Daear Consulting, LLC USDA-NIFA grant with Oglala Lakota College |
| Participant | American Geophysical Union Voices in Science |
| Former Faculty | Oglala Lakota College |
PhD, Geology and Geological Engineering · 2021
South Dakota School of Mines and Technology
BS, Interdisciplinary Earth and Environmental Sciences · 2013
Oglala Lakota College
If you're looking for my "old" GitHub, find it here Yawapi

