Hi, I’m Jack McNelis –

I finished my master’s in UTK Geography in 2016 with guidance from Drs. Yingkui Li and Robert Washington-Allen (now at UNR). For my thesis, we characterized fluvial processes inside a gully near Memphis TN (where I’m from) using geomorphometry + high-res point clouds collected with LIDAR instruments.

Since 2015, I’ve worked at NASA supporting the Earth Observing System Data System. I started at ORNL in a small group in ESD, the ORNL DAAC (which supports NASA’s Terrestrial Ecology program). They hired me as a summer intern because my resume mentioned MODIS. (Thanks, Dr. W-A) I came to JPL to join the PO.DAAC in early 2020—we support the Physical Oceanography program. Generally speaking, I try to configure physical oceanography data so they’re broadly useful over the long-term. My colleagues and I get to work with data from the bleeding-edge of remote sensing science (e.g. https://swot.jpl.nasa.gov/) and towards the development of standards/specifications to preserve and promulgate key info about the data produced by future missions. Highly interesting stuff.

In my spare time, I push a lot of garbage code to GitHub (https://github.com/jjmcnelis). I’m a major linux nerd. Recently I’m learning to build/develop with Arduino—currently working on an atmospheric sensing kit to launch on a high-altitude balloon (this summer, hopefully).

Contact me to discuss NASA earth science, linux stuffs, the many virtues of netCDF/HDF, etc!