Eskinder Gidey Sintayehu

I am Dr. Eskinder Gidey Sintayehu, currently serving as a NASA-funded Postdoctoral Research Scholar at the University of Louisville, Kentucky, U.S., and formerly a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa. I am also an Associate Professor at Mekelle University, Ethiopia, with nearly two decades of experience in research, teaching, and community engagement in higher education. My expertise lies in geo-information and Earth observation sciences (Earth Observation/Remote Sensing and GIS), enhanced by machine learning applications, which I use to model and manage environmental resources, with a focus on climate-driven impacts such as droughts, floods, heatwaves, cold waves, land system changes, land use efficiency, and the interaction between population and the built environment along the rural–urban continuum. I have conducted extensive research on climate variability and its implications for water resources, particularly in arid and semi-arid regions, and possess advanced skills in big data processing and analysis using datasets such as WorldPop Spatial Demographic Data, the GHS Urban Centre Database (GHS-UCDB), and NASA’s Prediction of Worldwide Energy Resources (POWER). I have authored numerous peer-reviewed publications, supervised and mentored MSc and Ph.D. students, and held academic leadership roles including Coordinator for Postgraduate Programs, Research, and Community Engagement at the Land Resources Management and Environmental Protection (LaRMEP) department, and Head of the Information Management Office (with the rank of Director) at the Institutional Transformation and Quality Assurance Directorate, Mekelle University. My research contributions, with a geographic focus on Africa and Southeast Asia, are reflected in a growing number of citations in scientific literature. I serve as an academic editor for Springer and PLOS ONE and as a reviewer for several leading international journals. Committed to continuous professional development, I regularly engage in advanced short-term training offered by ESRI and other institutions. I am enthusiastic about applying my interdisciplinary expertise across academia and industry to advance collaborative research, teaching, and community-focused initiatives, particularly in environmental resource monitoring, modeling, and addressing climate-related challenges.