Kytt MacManus joins the Environmental Flow Physics Lab (EFPL) as the Applied Science Lead

Kytt MacManus has joined the Department as the Applied Science Lead for Marco Giometto’s Environmental Flow Physics Lab (EFPL), focusing specifically on air quality and urban climate issues.

Kytt was formerly a member of the Columbia Climate School’s Center for Integrated Earth System Information (CIESIN) at the Lamont Campus, where he has worked since 2007. He remains an adjunct lecturer, teaching the Introduction to GIS for Sustainable Development and Spatial Analysis for Sustainable Development on the undergraduate Sustainable Development major. During his tenure at CIESIN, Kytt served as the Assistant Systems Engineer for the NASA Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC), a longstanding substantial contract administered at CIESIN. In this position, he led efforts to develop geospatial data sets on human environment interaction based on remote sensing and census/survey data. In addition, Kytt has been the principal investigator (PI) on several projects examining climate change impacts, vulnerability and adaptation, and remote sensing applications for decision-support funded by organizations such as NASA, NOAA, WRI, and NYSERDA. He is currently the PI on an open source science (OSS) grant to develop curriculum demonstrating the data science lifecycle across several interrelated NASA Earth Science Division thematic areas via Jupyter and Quarto notebooks with live interactive code. He is a member of the steering committees for the Global Forum on Geography and Statistics and has recently served as the co-lead of the Group on Earth Observations (GEO) Human Planet Initiative and as a Subject Matter Expert for NASA’s Satellite Needs Working Group. Kytt is a licensed FAA Part 107 drone pilot and has been training students to become pilots. Kytt has a MS in Environmental Science and Policy from the Bard Center for Environmental Policy and a BA in Political Science from Northeastern University. He is passionate about mentoring students and early career researchers and is focused on bridging the gap between societal needs and theoretical science.

We are excited to welcome Kytt to the team!