Student Member Spotlight: Christopher Swindell

Written by: Kevin Corbley

Christopher Swindell is a PhD student in the Geography Department at San Diego State University in California. He began his academic career studying Anthropology at the University of Georgia. After working in the private sector, he entered a Mathematics graduate program at Illinois State University. With plans to earn his PhD this December, Christopher is focusing his research on Explainable AI in geography, particularly supervised models and their trustworthiness. He emphasized the importance of understanding model decisions and ensuring they align with expected outcomes. He has been a GRSS member since 2022 and enjoys mountain biking and traveling in his free time.

Why did you decide to join GRSS?

It really fits in with looking at the technical aspects of modeling and the spatial aspects of modeling. But also being a part of that community, talking to people, especially talking to people at conferences or various events. I get to hear other people’s ideas, and that informs my entire PhD research by letting me know what other people have done already. I’m trying to put a new twist on it. The educational aspect of GRSS is a major selling point.

How do you expect GRSS will help you as you move forward in your academic career and beyond?

There’s the continuous learning aspect of it, but there’s also the opportunity to gain collaborations – to meet new people who have similar ideas or have a particular expertise, where we put both of our expertise together And then we’re able to create a new collaboration to think about and tackle new ideas…by looking at what I’m working on or what they’re working on. So really, the collaboration is a strong selling point for me.

What GRSS activities have you taken advantage of so far? And which ones do you hope to participate in?

I’ve done a few summer schools. One was HDCRS [High Performance and Disruptive Computing in Remote Sensing] in Spain two years ago, which was absolutely fantastic. Of course, I love going to Spain, but it was an opportunity to really go into some technical aspects of computing that normally wouldn’t be addressed. For instance, one of the things we learned about was using RAG [Retrieval-Augmented Generation] adopting large language models to your specific needs. And the cool thing was that it wasn’t just theoretical. I am also involved with ASPRS and have attended some of their events.

Looking long term, how do you think GRSS is going to benefit you and your professional career whether you stay in academia or go into industry?

That’s very relevant to right now because I’m looking beyond getting my PhD in December. So, one of the things I’m looking into is the network and seeing what positions are coming up on the horizon. Talking to people gives you the opportunity to be aware of the jobs that are about to come up. [This is true] in academia and the professional world, but also that crossover area like NASA JPL, which has a lot of collaborations between the public and private sectors.

Has your experience with GRSS differed in any way from what you expected, either good or bad?

I’m not sure what my expectations were when I started. Basically, I joined because some fellow students recommended it. So, I guess my expectations are being met because I didn’t have much in the way expect of expectations. The opportunities, especially in summer schools, I found to be very useful in terms of expanding my knowledge base where normally I’m very focused on what my PhD research is. It’s allowed me to look beyond my specific focus and see what other people are doing. I see some of the interesting avenues that are available for exploring, especially once I get done with my PhD. Maybe I don’t want to stay in one narrow channel, [and GRSS is revealing] places I can branch out and use my knowledge in very interesting areas whether I go to academia or real-world positions.

Are you planning to present at any upcoming GRSS conferences or events where people can meet you?

I’m always interested in presenting at conferences, of course, the main problem is making sure that my research is done to a level that when the lot conferences come up. I don’t have anything for IGARSS 2026, but by ASPRS 2026 I expect that I will be done substantially with research using Explainable AI to understand crop classification. So, I’m hoping to get that into ASPRS.

Looking back over your entire academic career, is there a professor or researcher who really made an impact on you that helped get you where you are today?

I’ve had several professors that have had a very positive impact. Of course, my current advisor, Dr. Atsushi Nara, here at SDSU, whom I chose specifically because of his area of interest. He’s one of those professors that everyone likes because he’s very approachable, but he also has a very deep knowledge. And so of course, I’m very biased looking back at how my own PhD proposal progressed from my initial idea, where he kept pushing back on each idea, until it finally came into its current formulation.

Were there any classes in your undergraduate or Master’s program that set you in a different direction?

There were two classes that I really remember from my master’s program, and one of them was The Design of Experiments. What I liked about that was the creativity that was allowed. The final project was to design an experiment to pick out the best model paper airplane design. So, the idea is fairly simple, but then how do you start thinking about what’s the best way to create an experiment for that, and how do you set up your model for that. The other class was Introduction to Data Mining. It got me thinking what are you actually looking at in the data. It was the place where I actually learned about these techniques that I’m now looking at.

What words of encouragement would you offer to others who were just considering joining GRSS?

I would say, take advantage of it! For me, I love the Summer Schools. Take advantage of the summer schools because they are a great opportunity to learn, but also meet people, like many of the people I met in Spain that I’m still in touch with. Even if we don’t collaborate academically, there’s still people that I get to follow on social media and connect with when our paths cross. But there’s also just that friendship and opportunity to meet people all over the world that I wouldn’t otherwise meet. Also, of course, the educational aspect of it – you get to learn from people who have vastly different backgrounds, some of whom are relatively early in their career stages, and others who have seen just about everything. It’s fascinating to see this really wide array of what people are doing and meeting them.

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