Dr. Rajendra Mohan Panda is a postdoctoral researcher at Mississippi State University with more than a decade of research experience in the multidisciplinary fields of agriculture, ecology, forestry, remote sensing and soil science primarily focused on gradient pattern analyses, climate change predictions, species diversity and distribution, invasion risk assessments, and spatial data analyses and interpretation, with expertise in species distribution modeling, large-data analytics, machine learning, spatial modeling, Bayesian statistics, interactive mapping and visualization, development of R-Packages/Apps.

He has more than twenty peer-reviewed publications, and contributions to six GitHub repositories, two Shiny Apps and two news articles those can be accessed at:

Google Scholar
Research Gate
GitHub Repositories
R Shiny Apps
News Article1
News Article2

Education:

Ph.D., Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, School of Water Resources, 2018, Thesis: Environmental determinants of plant richness in Indian Himalaya.

Research Positions:

• Postdoctoral Associate, Mississippi State University, Geosystems Research Institute, 2021-present


• Postdoctoral Associate, University of Georgia, Dept of Crop and Soil Sciences, 2020-2021


• Research Associate, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, Centre for Oceans, Rivers, Atmosphere and Land Sciences (CORAL), 2019–2020


• Sr. Project Officer, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, Centre for Oceans, Rivers, Atmosphere and Land Sciences (CORAL), 2018– 2019


• Graduate Research and Teaching Assistant, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, School of Water Resources, 2017–2018


• Graduate Research Fellow, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, School of Water Resources, 2014–2017


• Sr. Research Fellow, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, School of Water Resources, 2012–2014

Research Experience:

Plant Ecology Species diversity and distribution; species-environment interactions; Human impacts on ecosystems; gradient pattern analysis; climate change predictions; invasion risk assessments; modeling spatiotemporal ecological phenomena;

Animal Ecology Foraging behavior, movement ecology, population dynamics, human-animal interactions, and conservation and management of blackbucks (Antilope cervicapra); foraging behavior of Hanuman langur (Presbytes entellus); diversity and distribution chiropterans of Eastern Ghats;

Marine Ecology Assessing impacts of sea water acidification on oyster population; Development of machine learning algorithms for water quality estimation and mapping;

Soil Science Estimation and classification of soil temperature; Interactive mapping and visualization; Development of R-Packages/Apps;

Agriculture Application of the Bayesian statistics in Gulley widening; Characterization of soil organic matter across ecoregions of Mississippi state;

Remote sensing Satellite data analysis and interpretation; Modeling Hyper-spectral data through machine learning applications

Technical Skills:

• Large-Data Analytics


• Machine Learning Applications


• Species Distribution Modeling


• Bayesian Modelling


• Spatial Data Analyses and Modelling


• Development of R-Shiny Apps


• Interactive Mapping and Visualization

Software Skills:

• R


• ArcGIS


• STAN


• QGIS


• MATLAB


• Python(basics)