Juan Carlos Fernandez-Diaz, a research assistant professor in the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department and a co-investigator for the National Center for Airborne Laser Mapping (NCALM), is part of the 2023-25 cohort for the American Geophysical Union (AGU) LANDInG Academy Fellows.
The LANDInG Academy is a two year program aimed at providing mid faculty with a network, tools and resources to achieve more balanced representation in geosciences.
With more than 62,000 members from 137 countries as of 2018, the AGU is the premier international geophysics society. Fernandez-Diaz was chosen after a competitive application process. He will be part of the second cohort ever, after the union's first effort from 2021 to 2023. As part of the program, he will present at the AGU Fall Meeting 2025, which is currently scheduled for Washington D.C. from Dec. 15 to Dec. 19.
Fernandez-Diaz joined UH in 2010 as a senior researcher for the NCALM, after earning his doctorate in Geosensing Systems Engineering from the University of Florida. He became a research assistant professor in 2019.
He has been part of research teams at Cullen that have helped to uncover ancient cultures in the Honduran jungles, and an airborne mapping initiative that identified nearly 500 sites and patterns from early Mesoamerica. Most recently, the team helped mapped a previously unknown Maya city in the jungles of southern Campeche in Mexico.
The 2023-25 cohort will have 17 members, with the first summit for the group coming in Washington, D.C. on Sept. 14 and 15 of this year.