User:Ian

Ian Nesbitt was born in Williamstown, MA in November of 1990. He spent most of his youngest years outdoors playing in puddles on the sides of the road. Ian's parents nicknamed him "Hydro Ian" after he developed an interest in walking around the block after rainstorms, diverting rivulets of water with pebbles and sand. His formative years were also spent outside, running, cycling, and nordic skiing through the Green and White Mountains of New England.

Secondary and Postsecondary Education

Ian had the privilege of attending Holderness School, where he earned a reputation as the school's most rabid endurance athlete. He also got his first exposure to GIS and geography, focusing a senior honors thesis project on mapping and analyzing the school's ski trails in ArcGIS.

After graduating with Honors from Holderness, Ian attended Williams College, where he majored in Geosciences, wrote an undergraduate Honors thesis, competed for the school's NCAA Division I Nordic ski team, and was the treasurer and root administrator for the college's volunteer-run student services website, WSO.

Ian graduated from Williams with Honors and a B.A. in Geosciences in 2013.

Early Career

After graduating college, Ian spent one season as the assistant coach of the St. Michael's College Nordic ski team in Colchester, VT.

Following his tenure at St. Michael's, he was hired by e4sciences, a geophysical and engineering consulting firm located in Sandy Hook, CT. At e4, Ian learned many geophysical field methods including sub-bottom seismic, side-scan sonar, ground-penetrating radar, mobile LiDAR, and 3-dimensional acoustic imaging. In little over a year, Ian earned the position of Field Manager for both land and water operations at e4. He learned to pilot survey vessels up to 60ft (18m) in all weather and traffic conditions in the New York/New Jersey Harbor region, earning enough ship hours to be certified to pilot near-coastal vessels up to 100 tons (91 metric tons).

Graduate Study at UMaine

In 2017 after more than 3 years at e4sciences, Dr. Seth Campbell offered Ian the opportunity to work on a project investigating the stratigraphy of lake sediments in Maine lakes using ground-penetrating radar (GPR). The project aims to quantify the volume of sediment delivered to lake bottoms in Maine since the state emerged from the Laurentide Ice Sheet more than 12,000 years ago.