Julien Brun

Bio

Julien Brun is a Senior Data Scientist at the National Center for Ecological Synthesis and Analysis (NCEAS), affiliated with the University of California Santa Barbara (UCSB). The core of his work is to understand interdisciplinary teams' data and computing challenges and help them translate these challenges into solvable tasks. He advises and trains researchers on how to clean, structure (data modeling), combine, and analyze their heterogeneous data sets, as well as scaling their analysis. He is also an instructor in NCEAS data science training and summer school efforts teaching early-career scientists data analysis and programming best practices while promoting open and reproducible science principles. Before joining NCEAS, Julien was a Lead Data Engineer in the New Products team of a tech startup, where he has been developing contextual information to better describe neighborhoods and their life quality for a Zillow-like product. Julien’s scientific expertise is in ecohydrology, Earth observation techniques (remote sensing and GIS) and process-based models. Prior to conducting his Ph.D. in Environmental Engineering at Duke, Julien contributed to several projects on land cover change, vegetation monitoring, and disaster mapping for governmental and international organizations (UNOPS and UNITAR).