MESM 2027
Pronouns: he/him
Bio
Hayden comes to the Bren School with a variety of environmental interests, especially climate change resilience and adaptation, habitat restoration, and technologies that can be applied to these fields. Originally from South Carolina, he graduated from Duke University with a B.S. in Environmental Sciences in 2024. As an undergraduate, he studied at the Duke Marine Lab, where he volunteered with salt marsh restoration research and gained experience with drone imaging and GIS for coastal management.
He spent the following year as a GIS contractor with the US Environmental Protection Agency. His work included developing and presenting models for Enterococcus bacterial concentrations in an estuary. He also gathered stakeholder input and wrote a user guide for an EPA data visualization website intended to make existing environmental health data more accessible to the public. He saw the potential that such tools offer communities and resource managers for assessing and adapting to climate change impacts.
At Bren, Hayden wishes to specialize in Conservation Planning, continue to explore methods and tools to aid climate resilience and other environmental efforts, and (hopefully) learn how to surf.