Ray Grossman ’15
Mathematics
UAV's and their Possibilites for Ecology
I spent most of my summer working with unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and studying their possible applications for ecology. First, I assisted with a project that used a UAV to take aerial photos of a cranberry bog, and stitched the photos together using software. Later, we hope to calculate the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) of the photos, which is essentially a measure of the amount of chlorophyll in various plots, representative of their overall health. Additionally, I worked on a literature review that looked at current studies in ecology and identified their spatial and temporal scope, to identify possible gaps in collected ecological data. Finally, I spent some time learning how to pilot a UAV, so I could continue the project over the school year when one of the graduate students had left.
2013
Development
Princeton University, Princeton, NJ
Lyndon Estes, Associate Research Scholar, Woodrow Wilson School and the Program in Science, Technology, and Environmental Policy. Lecturer in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology