I am currently a Ph.D. Candidate and an IGERT Fellow in the Department of Geography.  Also, I am a member of the UB Groundwater Research Group where I study modeling regional groundwater flow and contaminant transport. I was born and raised in Germany and also went to university there. While studying in Darmstadt, Germany, I participated in a student exchange program with the State University of New York at Buffalo. I stayed in Buffalo for one and half years and achieved my Master of Science Degree in February of 2001. After returning to Germany it took me another year to reach my German civil engineering degree (Diplomingenieur des Bauwesens). During the summer I worked as a research associate at the University at Darmstadt on modeling flow through the protective layer of a landfill. As part of the IGERT in GIScience program I traveled to Stockholm, Sweden for two months in the spring of 2005 to work with Prof Cvetkovic at the Kungliga Tekniska Högskolan (Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm). IGERT has also allowed me travel to a multitude of conferences.