Buck Sharpton GINA Director, Vice Chancellor for Research at UAF
Tom Heinrichs Associate Director
Dayne Broderson System Analyst
Jay Cable Research and Web Programmer
Chloe Edgar System Analyst
Kevin Engle Research Programmer, Ground Station Engineer
Will Fisher Research and Web Programmer
Sarah Garcia Fiscal Officer
Jason Grimes Research and Web Programmer
Jess Grunblatt System and Data Analyst
Cheryl Haase Data System Analyst
James Halliday Student
Peter Hickman GIS Coordinator
Colleen Morey Admin and Fiscal Staff
Jonathan Sawyer GIS Systems Programmer / Analyst
Dan Stahlke Research and Web Programmer
Buck Sharpton, GINA Director, Vice Chancellor for Research at UAF
Virgil L. (Buck) Sharpton was named vice chancellor for research at the University of Alaska Fairbanks in May 2006. Sharpton joined the UAF faculty in 1998 with a joint appointment between the Geophysical Institute and the Department of Geology and Geophysics and was awarded tenure in 2000. In 2001, he was awarded one of six presidential professorships across the University of Alaska statewide system and held the title of president’s professor of remote sensing. In his current position as vice chancellor for research, he assists the chancellor in setting the research agenda at UAF. He oversees the Center for Research Services, the Geophysical Institute, the International Arctic Research Center, the Office of Electronic Miniaturization, the Institute of Arctic Biology and various research programs. Sharpton serves as the university representative to the Arctic Research Consortium of the United States, the Inland Northwest Research Alliance and the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research.
Prior to joining UAF, Sharpton was senior staff scientist at the Lunar Planetary Institute affiliated with the NASA Johnson Space Center, where he served for 14 years. Sharpton sits on a variety of NASA review panels as well as state and local advisory boards.
Sharpton earned a B.S. with high honors in geology from Grand Valley State University in 1979 and a Ph.D. and Sc.M. in geological sciences from Brown University in 1984 and 1981 respectively. He was a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council postdoctoral fellow for the Geological Survey of Canada from 1984 to 1986.
Back to top
Tom Heinrichs, Associate Director
Phone - (907) 474-6897
Email Tom
Tom Heinrichs is Associate Director for the Geographic Information Network of Alaska (GINA) at the University of Alaska. He performs general and technical management, program development, and outreach for GINA. He has been instrumental in creating partnerships and joint projects between the University, agencies, and the private sector.
Prior to joining GINA/ION, Tom worked for the UAF Geophysical Institute’s Computer Resource Center supporting the general infrastructure (DNS, mail, and web servers) and providing high-end Unix support to individual projects.
Prior to becoming a System Analyst, Tom was a Hydrologist and Project Manager, first with the USGS, then with Michael Baker Engineering, a large private consultancy.
He holds a B.S. in Physics from Stanford and a M.S. in Geophysics from the University of Alaska Fairbanks.
Back to top
Dayne Broderson, System Analyst
Phone - (907) 474-6182
Email Dayne
Dayne Broderson is a System Analyst for GINA. He has worked on a wide variety of UNIX environments with a focus on Linux. His skills include system administration, network administration, web development, and security. He works on keeping systems working and is often tapped for special projects.
He holds a B.S. in Computer Science from The University of Alaska Fairbanks. Prior to joing GINA/ION, Dayne worked for UAF GI’s Alaska SAR Facility for 3 years as a System Analyst and network administrator
Back to top
Chloe Edgar, System Analyst
Phone - (907) 474-5669
Email Chloe
Chloe Edgar is a Systems Administrator for GINA. She builds and maintains the hardware and software components of GINA's Information Systems. Monitoring systems health, performing repairs and implementing optimizations to keep things running smoothly.
She built and maintains GINA's teaching lab, manages user accounts, and provides technical assistance to students and instructors. Chloe specializes in Linux server administration, but also has experience with Solaris, Windows Server, network administration.
She is currently working toward a B.S. in Computer Science at UAF.
Back to top
Jay Cable, Research and Web Programmer
Phone - (907) 474-1856
Email Jay
Jay Cable is a Research and Web Programmer for GINA. He helps operate GINA’s satellite ground stations and performs programming on special projects. He has worked with a wide array of programming languages including Java, C, Ruby, JavaScript, and Perl.
Prior to joining GINA, Jay worked for the UAF Geophysical Institute’s Alaska SAR Facility (ASF) for four years. While at ASF Jay developed software to support the reception and processing of data from RADARSAT-1, ERS-1, ERS-2, and JERS-1. Jay has a B.S. in Computer Science from the University of Alaska Fairbanks and someday hopes to complete his M.S.
Back to top
Kevin Engle, Research Programmer, Ground Station Engineer
Phone - (907) 474-5569
Email Kevin
Kevin Engle is a Research Programmer and Ground Station Engineer of GINA's Direct Readout satellite reception facility. This facility currently houses two real-time reception systems: an L-Band High Resolution Picture Transmission (HRPT) station receiving NOAA Polar Orbiter (AVHRR/DCS/TOVS) data and Orbview-2 (SeaWiFS) data and an X-Band receiving station receiving MODIS data from the EOS Terra and Aqua missions.
He has developed and maintained the operational Direct Readout Reception capability at the University of Alaska Fairbanks since 1993 with the installation of the HRPT station at UAF and more recently with the addition of the X-band receiving station in 2001. He has worked closely with students and researchers both at UAF and other institutions as well as local, state, and federal agencies in automated processing and delivery of satellite data-derived products to meet their research and/or operational requirements.
Back to top
Will Fisher, Research and Web Programmer
Phone - (907) 474-1182
Email Will
Prior to joining GINA, Will helped to start a software development company in Fairbanks, Rogers Software Development Inc. During his 7 years at Rogers Software, Will worked as a programmer, project manager, systems analyst, and technology consultant to provide online access to data and management systems for several national franchise companies.
Back to top
Sarah Garcia, Fiscal Officer
Phone - (907) 474-2008
Email Sarah
Education:
AA General Studies, Northwest Vista College
BS Business Adminstration, Wayland Baptist University
BBA Business Adminstration Concentrating in Accounting, University of Alaska Southeast
MBA, concentration in Capital Markets, May 2009
Memberships:
NCURA
Back to top
Jason Grimes, Research and Web Programmer
Phone - (907) 474-7140
Email Jason
Jason is a Research and Web Programmer for GINA. He is the designer of www.gina.alaska.edu. He perfoms web mapping programming with MapServer/Chameleon and ArcIMS.
Previously Jason worked for the Human Resources Department at the University of Alaska statewide office. There he did SCT Banner HR administration and web site construction/maintenance using Roxen content management software. Jason worked for many years at the Desert Research Institute in Reno, Nevada as a research programmer and Technical System Administrator for the Spatial Analysis Lab. In the Lab, Jason supported researchers and students working on remote sensing projects in the areas of hardware, software, programming, and remote sensing/GIS data processing.
Over the last several years Jason has been working with large network data systems, web programming, and web content management systems. Jason has his A.A.S. degree in electronics from Trukee Meadows CC in Reno, Nevada.
Back to top
Cheryl Haase, Data System Analyst
Phone - (907) 474-6522
Email Cheryl
Cheryl Haase is a Data System Analyst for the Geographic Information Network of Alaska (GINA) at the University of Alaska. She specializes in enterprise-class data system design, implementation, and operation. She has substantial experience supporting many RDBMS’s on Unix platforms including Oracle, Sybase, and Ingres. Her skills include database administration, project management, and security. One of her major current interests is metadata standards and metadata generation in support of heterogenous datasets within an enterprise-level environment.
Prior to joining GINA, Cheryl worked for the UAF Geophysical Institute’s Alaska SAR Facility for 10 years, first as a database administrator and then as their Lead System Analyst providing leadership in database administration, system administration, networking, and security.
Before moving to Alaska, Cheryl worked within the pharmaceutical industry, first as a database programmer and then later as a database administrator.
She holds a B.S. in Psychology from The State College of New Jersey with a minor in French. She has taken many vendor supported training courses for all aspects of database administration in many RDBMS’s, including PostgreSQL/PostGIS, Oracle, Sybase and Ingres. Additionally, she has taken many training courses within the areas of project management and supervision.
Back to top
James Halliday, Student
Phone - (907) 474-5679
Email James
James Halliday is an undergraduate student at UAF studying computer science. He values the virtues of laziness, impatience, and hubris along with the idea that "There's more than one way to do it" from the perl tradition.
James has written software for underwater robots, immersive visualizations, system administration, code golf contests, web applications, neural networks, and mathematical models with perl, python, ruby, javascript, c and haskell. James is always looking for new programming languages and new ways of reasoning about computation because he suspects that all problems are fundamentally trivial with the proper linguistic and mathematical abstractions. He writes his programs in a shell with vim and enjoys the freedom and productivity of the GNU/Linux software ecosystem.
James worked at ARSC for two years as a student before joining GINA as a student employee. At GINA, he builds software that stiches together maps, builds packages with nifty bindings, and whatever else they tell him to do!
Back to top
Peter Hickman, GIS Coordinator
Phone - (907) 474-1567
Email Peter
Peter works as the GIS Coordinator for GINA. He has over 10 years of professional GIS experience working for a variety of corporations (Anteon, Intergraph, L3) as a DOD contractor to the Army at Fort Irwin and Fort Bragg, the Marine Corps at Camp Pendleton, and most recently the Air Force at Eielson AFB where he was the GeoBase Administrator from 2002 to 2006. Peter's job at GINA includes providing and integrating enterprise level GIS support, guidance, and analytical capability into ongoing GINA projects. Peter also owns and operates a small consulting business out of his home office in North Pole, Alaska named GeoApps, Inc.
Back to top
Colleen Morey, Admin and Fiscal Staff
Phone - (907) 474-2000
Email Colleen
Back to top
Jonathan Sawyer, GIS Systems Programmer / Analyst
Phone - (907) 474-5689
Email Jon
Jonathan is a GIS Systems Programmer / Analyst for GINA. He has over 6 years of experience programming in various technology domains including low level systems, web, to 2D and 3D graphics. He is very is close to earning his B.S. degree in Computer Science here at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Prior to working for GINA, he worked as a programmer for Rogers Software Development developing enterprise class point of sale software systems for large international clients in the hair salon industry. Before working for RSD, he was a Web and Media Administrator for the North Slope Borough and has lived in northern Alaska for quite some time.
Back to top
Dan Stahlke, Research and Web Programmer
Phone - (907) 474-2740
Email Dan
Dan Stahlke is a Research and Web Programmer for GINA. He has developed web interfaces for remote sensing datasets and custom image processing applications. He programs in Perl, Java, and C.
Dan is the primary developer for the GINA SwathViewer tool for viewing imagery and GIS data on a dynamic globe.
Dan has a B.S. in Mathematics with a minor in Computer Science from the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Prior to joining GINA, he worked for Third Sector Technologies as a web/database programmer.
Back to top