Natalie Nelson

Natalie Nelson is an Assistant Professor of Biological and Agricultural Engineering and Faculty Fellow in the Center for Geospatial Analytics at NC State. She is the Principal Investigator of the Biosystems Analytics Lab, studies from which take a data-intensive and management-focused approach to the study of environmental system dynamics. Natalie and her team pursue questions related to estuarine and coastal water quality, land-sea connectivity, and the influence of climate and land use change on agroecosystem productivity in the Atlantic-Gulf Coastal Plains through the use of statistical, process-based, and machine learning models. This work involves analysis of a wide range of data types – from in situ monitoring observations to satellite imagery. A key goal of Natalie’s work is to advance the use of predictive models in natural resources management.

Natalie earned a B.S. degree in Agricultural and Biological Engineering from the University of Florida, and her Ph.D. in the same department through the support of a NSF Graduate Research Fellowship. During her Ph.D., she focused on hydrologic sciences and water quality modeling, and investigated drivers of harmful algal blooms in fresh and coastal waters of Florida. She joined NC State in 2017. While at NC State, Natalie has been named a Goodnight Early Career Innovator and University Faculty Scholar. In 2021, she received a NSF CAREER Award from the Environmental Engineering program to study the effects of sunny-day floods on coastal water quality.