Inigo Peng

Inigo Peng (MS ’21)

By Lori Atherton

Inigo Peng (MS ’21) came to SEAS with several interests in mind, but his love of coding led him to specialize in Geospatial Data Sciences.

“I’m interested in data and how it will get used in policies and decision making,” Peng says. “Making data-driven decisions is one of the most responsive ground-level things you can do to get projects done effectively and with impact.”

As a staff data scientist at FlowWest in northern California, an organization that uses technology to find solutions to water and natural resources issues, Peng utilizes data integration, analytics and visualization tools on large government projects. One project, for the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, involves streamlining how they collect, upload and share fisheries data. Another project for the California Department of Water Resources uses modeling to improve the spring-run salmon population in the Tuolumne River. Peng also works with Indigenous communities to improve their environmental data management capacities, including working with the Big Valley Band of Pomo Indians of the Big Valley Rancheria to save the Clear Lake hitch, a culturally and ecologically significant fish in the Clear Lake basin.

“I do interesting work that I feel has tactical effects on the communities and fisheries environment in northern California,” says Peng.

Most of Peng’s time at SEAS overlapped with the COVID pandemic, but he has fond memories of Natural Resources Statistics with Associate Professor Meha Jain, Diverse Farming Systems with Professor Ivette Perfecto, and his master’s project on Great Lakes ice cover with Associate Research Scientist Ayumi Fujisaki-Manome.

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