Narcisa Gabriela Pricope

Narcisa Pricope serves as Director of Research and Development for the Center for Geospatial Information Technology at Virginia Tech in the United States of America, through a joint appointment connecting the College of Natural Resources and Environment and the Virginia Tech National Security Institute. She is also a tenured Professor in the Department of Geography. Originally from Romania, Dr. Pricope received a Bachelor’s degree in Geography and English from Babes-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca (Romania), a Master’s degree in Geosciences from Western Kentucky University and holds a Ph.D. in Geography from the University of Florida.

Dr. Pricope is a human–environment geographer and geospatial scientist who uses geospatial modeling, remote sensing, unoccupied aerial systems and machine learning to work at the food-water-energy nexus at multiple spatio-temporal scales. Her research focuses on complex socio-ecological systems dynamics, especially centered on understanding and quantifying environmental variability and the vulnerability of populations to environmental changes, especially land degradation and drought. Much of her work is co-produced with communities and diverse stakeholders and spans Africa, Asia, Latin America and North America.

Dr. Pricope has been working collaboratively to provide guidance on the integration of earth observation data with socio-economic datasets to support monitoring and reporting on land degradation neutrality with funding from the Global Environment Facility. To date, Dr. Pricope has published over 75 peer-reviewed articles on the various aspects of integrating earth observation, remote sensing and drone photogrammetry with spatio-temporal modeling to advance human well-being.