Donal O'Leary

Donal O'Leary works to empower people to access, understand, and use NEON data for both teaching and scientific research. His duties include: teaching workshops in academic environments and at scientific conferences, curating and publishing open source tutorials for accessing and analyzing NEON data, and supporting researchers in their scientific objectives. Donal’s expertise in remote sensing and higher education, combined with data science skills (R, Python, Arc, etc.) and years of field experience, supports investigations spanning the broad range of NEON data products.

Prior to pursuing higher education, Donal spent years gaining hands-on field experience working for the National Park Service as a trail crew leader and volunteer coordinator. Motivated to return to school by the emergence of GIS technology in conservation management, Donal earned his B.S. in Watershed Science with a minor in Spatial Information Management from Colorado State University, his M.S. in Geography from Western Washington University, and his PhD in Geographical Sciences from the University of Maryland. Over that time, Donal has taught numerous university courses in geography, environmental science, GIS, computer programming, and statistics, both in-person and online.