Trevor Allen

I graduated from KSU in May 2006 with a Bachelor of Science in Geographic Information Science and a Certificate in Information Technology.

• 2006–2008: After graduating from KSU, I joined Atlanta Gas Light Resources (AGL) where I worked as a GIS Specialist for 2 years. I maintained the GIS database which involved digitizing new gas distribution lines or updating existing ones from as-built drawings and through conversion and importing of CAD files into the GIS. Some memorable experiences include attending my first Esri User Conference (UC) in San Diego, CA in 2006 and traveling to AGL offices in New Jersey to train new GIS users.

• 2008–2010: I next joined the engineering firm CH2M Hill (now known as Jacobs) as a GIS Consultant where I worked across a wide range of different projects, including environmental remediation, military master planning, determining locations of nuclear energy facilities, and city government.

• 2010–2011: I attended King’s College London, earning a Master of Science (MSc) in Environmental Monitoring, Modelling, and Management. In this program, I learned skills and techniques for collecting, analyzing, and interpreting earth observation data to apply to research in environmental sustainability, climate change, and water resources. My thesis focused on how projected temperature rise (from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report) may affect runoff volumes in the Swakop River Catchment, an ephemeral river system in Namibia. As part of the study, I created raster datasets, derived from a collection of Landsat 7 ETM+ images, that represented the percent land cover of herbaceous vegetation, tree, and bare earth in the catchment. These datasets were then applied in the WaterWorld hydrology model (KCL) under two different modeled scenarios. 

• 2011–2012: Upon graduating from King’s College London, I started work in the UK as a GIS Specialist with the Environment Agency (EA).

• 2012–2014: I then joined Critigen UK (now known as Locana, a TRC company) as a GIS Consultant for the Thames Tideway Tunnel, a construction mega-project located in London, UK.

• 2014–2017: I next joined Thames Estuary Asset Management (TEAM2100) as a GIS Manager with Critigen. TEAM2100 is a flood defense program protecting the City of London—including $396B in property value and 1.4 million people. As GIS Manager of a small team, we stood up the program’s enterprise GIS, and over a period of only 2.5 years, developed an award-winning, spatial data platform supporting all program functions. 

• 2017–2020: I returned to Atlanta and continued working with Critigen. As a GIS Manager, I led a technical team of GIS analysts and developers to implement the Esri Utility Network for a large gas utility customer. The GIS cloud platform included ArcGIS Pro, Portal for ArcGIS, and mobile applications that were deployed to a user base of over 5,000 across 3 states. The delivery culminated in an Esri Partner Award and a personal letter from Esri CEO, Jack Dangermond, to the program.

• 2020–Present: I am presently a Program Manager with Leidos leading a Data Science contract at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). We design, develop, and deliver data solutions supporting the CDC mission to protect Americans from public health threats. The team delivers analytic dashboards, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (AI/ML) solutions, and performs GIS analysis using a variety of data sources, formats, and tools. We develop data pipelines and public-facing interactive data dashboards to report the level of vaccination coverage across vaccination preventable diseases, including COVID, flu, RSV and many others, across different population groups. We supported the COVID pandemic from beginning to end. These reports provided the CDC and stakeholders insight on the changing nature of the pandemic allowing CDC decision makers to respond with appropriate action.

Yes, the knowledge and skills that I learned while at KSU in GIS and remote sensing software, data, and techniques prepared me for a number of different career opportunities. I loved the mixture of Geography, technology, computer, and data skills all in one degree. There were not many bachelor programs of this kind in 2006 and I am so glad that I discovered KSU and GIS. It has changed my life.