Christy Swann

My postdoctoral work is taking me a world I have yet to explore, Mars. The two year project is aimed at redefining the threshold of motion for wind-blown sand on Mars and is funded by the NASA Mars Fundamental Research Program. We are 'simulating'​ various surfaces of Mars at NASA Ames Research Center's MArtian Surface WInd Tunnel (MARSWIT). Instrumentation I have built and new sand traps I have designed are deployed to capture a high resolution transport and flow corresponding to the threshold for motion.

At the US Army Corps of Engineers Coastal Hydraulics Laboratory, I worked on multiple projects largely focused on extracting coastal features from ground-based LiDAR to assess the resilience of the coastline. The work here was some of the most rewarding work I have done as I was working directly with coastal district managers and engineers to develop tools they could use to assess the state of their coastlines. I also spent quite a bit of time designing a long-term aeolian monitoring system equipped with sand transport and 2D-3D flow instrumentation.

While completing my PhD at A&M I did a significant amount of teaching including accompanying students to international destinations to teach them how to conduct field work in tropical environments. My teaching assistant load change over the semesters I was at A&M with most of my teaching revolving around Earth Science labs, Physical Geography field courses and a required senior-level course advising students with their solo projects. I also was employed to design, develop and built multiple sand traps and sensors for an NSF study examining the horizontal variability of aeolian transport. The experience gained from this research assistantship I continue to design, build and test aeolian transport instrumentation.