Natalie Robbins, P.S.M., VISR Manager

Natalie Robbins is the VISR manager and team lead for geospatial analysis projects.  She received her B.S. in Environmental Science from the University of Arizona (2016) and her Professional Science Masters (P.S.M) from Tennessee Tech (2019) in Environmental Informatics before spending 6 months working at Oak Ridge National Lab. Natalie now serves as a geospatial/geophysical consultant for researchers across Vanderbilt University and Vanderbilt University Medical Center, as well as the greater TN area. Natalie also serves as a board member for the Tennessee Geographic Information Council (TNGIC). Examples of projects that Natalie has worked on include mobility among persons living with HIV, using critical spatial inquiry to understand student movement and utilization of campus, and COVID-19 tracking. Her own research interests include remote sensing and planetary geosciences. Natalie was recently named the Tennessee Tech College of Interdisciplinary Studies Alumna of the Year (2020) for her work tracking COVID-19 spread across TN.

Steven Wernke, VISR Director

Dr. Wernke (website) is VISR Director. Dr. Wernke is Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of Anthropology, as well as Director of the Spatial Analysis Research Laboratory (website). He is an archaeologist and historical anthropologist of the Andean region of South America. His interdisciplinary research interests center on local experiences of imperialism and colonialism on both sides of the Spanish invasion of the Andes. His research spatially integrates archaeological, documentary, and ethnographic information, and he teaches spatial modeling and analysis at the undergraduate and graduate levels.

James Zimmer-Dauphinee, P.H.D., SARL Postdoctoral Fellow

Dr. James Zimmer-Dauphinee is a postdoctoral researcher in the Vanderbilt Spatial Analysis Research Lab (SARL), through funding provided by the GeoPACHA 2.0 Grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.  Specializing in remote sensing and artificial intelligence (AI)-assisted archaeological survey methods, his current research develops and deploys deep learning models for large-scale autonomous archaeological satellite imagery survey. James earned his Ph.D. in anthropology from Vanderbilt University in 2023. His dissertation, titled “Trans-Regional Perspectives on Agricultural Deintensification in the Colonial Andes through Remote Sensing and AI-Assisted Archaeological Survey,” explored the use of satellite imagery and machine learning to identify and analyze archaeological landscapes in Southern Peru. Prior to his doctoral studies, James received a Master’s degree in anthropology from the University of Arkansas (2014) where he used Electrical Resistivity Tomography to examine sub-surface structures of Mound Bottom, some of the tallest prehistoric mounds in Arkansas. He also holds dual Bachelor’s degrees in Anthropology and Mathematics from Georgia Southern University (2011). 

Samanthe Turley, B.A., Graduate Student Worker

Samantha Turley is a PhD Candidate in the Anthropology Department at Vanderbilt. She studies the social relations of architecture production in southern Peru.  Her work investigates how labor and material networks implicated in the construction and maintenance of architecture coproduced new types of sociopolitical relationships and ways of being in the Late Intermediate through middle Colonial periods. She utilizes archaeometric, geospatial, and experimental archaeological approaches in her research. Samantha holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Rochester in Archaeology, Technology, and Historic Structures and a Bachelor of Music from the Eastman School of Music. She has worked at various archaeological sites throughout New England, Ghana, and Peru, and is excited to be on the VISR GPR team! 

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