Erin Hestir is the director of CITRIS at UC Merced. She is also an associate professor in civil and environmental engineering.
Hestir is an expert in environmental remote sensing to support scientific and monitoring applications in biodiversity, species invasions, aquatic ecology, biogeochemistry and water quality at multiple scales, from local to continental. Hestir is the co-principal investigator and aquatic lead for BioSCape, NASA’s first biodiversity campaign. She is the author of over 100 scholarly works, and she currently serves as a subject matter expert for NASA’s visible to shortwave infrared (VSWIR) instrument in the Surface Biology and Geology Mission, and as a member of the NASA Biodiversity and Ecological Conservation Science Team, the NASA Ocean Color Research Team and the Nation Science Foundation (NSF) IoT for Precision Agriculture Engineering Research Center.
Her favorite animal is the eastern grey kangaroo.