Chris is a research associate in the Landscape Dynamics group advised by center director Ross Meentemeyer. Chris develops flexible spatial-temporal models of pest and pathogen spread in forest and agricultural ecosystems. The goal is to understand both the process and the pattern of pest and pathogen invasion. Another facet of his research is understanding interactions between disturbances. Chris is also interested in how modeling can be used across a wide variety of ecological systems. He is particularly interested in making landscape level simulations faster and more user-friendly. Current areas of interest are CPU parallelization, GPU parallelization, open science, and user-friendly GUIs.