Jessica Steele received a B.S. in Applied Ecology and Environmental Sciences from Michigan Technological University in 2001. She received her master’s degree in Environmental Science and Policy from Clark University in 2005. She completed her PhD in Geography at the University of Florida in 2014, where her research focused on vegetation dynamics and change modeling using hyperspectral and multispectral satellite imagery in combination with field measurements collected in southern Africa. During this time she also worked to collect household-level livelihood data for villages in Botswana and Namibia. Also she worked on developing statistical models for predicting invasive species spread in the Florida Everglades. Jessica currently works as a Research Fellow in the Department of Geography and Environment at the University of Southampton where her research activities focus on developing approaches to improve high resolution poverty mapping using mobile phone data.

University of Southampton profile