SDView Personnel at the Engineering Resouce Center (ERC) at SDSU:

Kevin Dalsted (Engineering Resource Center Head)

M.S. Soil Science
B.S. Soil Science

  • Office Phone:(605) 688-4184
    Office Fax: (605) 688-5880
    Office Location:Harding Hall
    Engineering Resource Center
    South Dakota State University
    Box 2220
    Harding Hall, Rm. 228B
    Brookings, SD 57007
    E-mail: kevin_dalsted@sdstate.edu

Kevin Dalsted is the Director of the Engineering Resource Center, College of Engineering, South Dakota State University. The ERC is the main outreach arm of the College of Engineering. Dalsted has been at SDSU for over 25 years and has been the Director of ERC for four years. Throughout his career he has specialized in applications of remote sensing for natural resources and land use/land cover studies.

Mary O'Neill, Research Associate (ERC)

B.S. 1972 Mathematics, SDSU
M.S. 1994 Geography, SDSU

  • Office Phone:(605) 688-5597
    Office Fax: (605) 688-5880
    Office Location:Harding Hall
    Engineering Resource Center
    South Dakota State University
    Box 2220
    Harding Hall, Rm. 324
    Brookings, SD 57007
    E-mail: mary_oneill@sdstate.edu

Mary O'Neill is a research associate in the Engineering Resource Center, College of Engineering, at South Dakota State University. She has a Bachelor of Science degree from SDSU in mathematics and a Master of Science degree, also from SDSU, in geography. She has completed several additional courses in engineering, computer science and statistics and several geographic information system and image processing workshops and short courses. In her position at SDSU she is involved in several projects involving geospatial technologies. Many of her recent projects have focused on the utilization of these technologies -- geographic information systems, global positioning systems and remote sensing -- in precision agriculture and the K-12 classroom. In the past she was involved in the transfer of these technologies to scientists in several developing countries via SDSU's Visiting International Scientist Program. This program involved training of the scientists at SDSU as well as traveling internationally to present workshops.

Pravara Thanapura , Research Associate (ERC)

M.S. South Dakota State University 1998
B.A. Kasetsart University, Bangkok, Thailand 1993
Ph.D. Candidate, Atmospheric, Environmental and Water Resources, SDSU (Fall 2001-Present)

Pravara Thanapura is a research associate at the Office of Remote Sensing (ORS), Engineering Resource Center (ERC), College of Engineering (COE), South Dakota State University (SDSU). Ms. Thanapura received her Bachelor of Arts degree in Geography with Second Class Honors from Kasetsart University, Bangkok, Thailand in 1993. She completed her Master of Science degree in Geography at SDSU in 1998 with GPA: 4.0/4.0 and since that time has been employed at ORS/ERC. She has extensive training in the areas of Geographic Information Systems and Image Processing. In the past three years , she has been involved in several geospatial projects including: -- development of a GIS for South Dakota Army National Guard (SDARNG) training areas and facilities -- GIS dataset development for the Education Public Access Resource Center (EdPARC) -- integration of remote sensing, GIS, and GPS for weed detection project for the Upper Midwest Aerospace Consortium (UMAC) -- development of an ArcExplorer training module, GIS data sets, and GIS training for South Dakota producers participating in UMAC -- SDSU College of Engineering research development grant entitled "Spectral Reflectance of Crop, Weed, and Soil Mixed Pixel: A Comparative Analysis of Field Data and Remotely Sensed Image Data" -- development of a web based GIS system for agricultural data for UMAC -- participation in the NASA EPSCoR project entitled "Cross Calibration of Landsat and IKONOS Sensors for Use in Precision Agriculture". Currently, Ms. Thanapura is pursuing a PhD in Atmospheric, Environmental and Water Resources at SDSU.