Core Team

Frank D'Agnese, Ph.D.
President & Chief Technology Officer

Frank uniquely combines being a highly respected earth scientist and a technology guru with very good skills leading and connecting with people. Frank leads Earth Knowledge in ongoing innovation to bring solutions to the needs for businesses, organizations and communities to understand earth and world information to make good decisions. This is his passion and profession.

He is well-known for his expertise and innovation in the integration of earth and environmental science knowledge. His leadership in scientific program development, geographic information management, regional water resource assessment, and environmental science investigation has resulted in over 100 publications and/or presentations, including invitations to speak as a keynote lecturer and to publish both nationally and internationally.

Frank completed his doctoral degree from the Colorado School of Mines. He then began his 15-year career at the United States Geological Survey where he was a highly respected senior scientist breaking new ground in collaborations, information integration, sophisticated modeling and 3D visualizations. There, he had the opportunity to work with outstanding scientists, nationally and internationally, and to manage very large and diverse teams of scientists.

At Earth Knowledge, Frank is President and Chief Technology Officer initiating and overseeing all WISSDOM technology. He also oversees all client and technical work and collaborates with Julia on business development, strategy, web design and finance. On a personal level in addition to enjoying his time with his family, Frank is fascinated by tree frogs, turtles, lizards, and dogs. He enjoys southwestern food, especially chile peppers - the hotter the better!

Julia Armstrong D'Agnese, M.S.
CEO

Earth Knowledge is built on Julia's vision of how decision makers and lay people need to clearly and unmistakably grasp and use earth and world information for good decisions. Her strengths in understanding and communicating with businesses, agencies and communities are key in building bridges between science and world knowledge and those that need to use it. Julia's strong sense of design, imagery and visualizations assist in building dynamic tools. Her strong relationship skills facilitate collaborations and connections from high levels of decision making to on the ground powerful teams. She brings passion and commitment to taking care of our planet, and concurrently our businesses and communities.

Julia's educational background focused on business, psychology and international studies from the University of Illinois and Arizona. She used this training to successfully create her own consulting practice that she operated for almost 20 years. Through her work, Julia has helped her clients create more successful lives and businesses. Her strengths include designing a business model, developing corporate identity, prioritizing and pursuing personal and business dreams & objectives, building effective teams, bringing ideas to market in effective and profitable ways. She worked in the areas of: venture capital, entertainment, scientific, medical, legal, academic, culinary and retail.

At Earth Knowledge, Julia oversees with Frank: business development, strategy, web design, finance, client and employee relations. In her spare time, she serves as VP on the Board of Directors of Desert Waters Institute which has recently joined with the Sonoran Desert Museum, and the Zazzle committee working with community leaders. In addition to her family, Julia loves singing, dancing, traveling, chocolate, and animals!

John McDonagh
Senior Systems Analyst & Web Applications Developer

John is Earth Knowledge's IT genius. He is a highly-skilled expert in information technology operations and oversees the installation, maintenance, and management of our software and hardware systems, our network, and servers. John is also key in research and development on several of our geospatial and Web-based projects. He is passionate about innovation and creatively pursues pathways for integrating new technology into the Earth Knowledge WISSDOM portals and tools. John is also an excellent team player.

John graduated from The University of Arizona in Management Information Systems. He is an expert problem solver – dependable, diligent and creative. John lives for cutting-edge electronics and technologies, and enjoys travel, surfing and golf.

Tom Baumgartner
Senior Web Design & Web Applications Developer

Tom is our design guru. He has a detailed-eye for art, design, and communication of complex concepts through many media. He specializes in 3D modeling, rendering, visualizations and virtual reality. He also clearly has an appreciation for the natural artistry that is Earth.

Tom has 20 years experience working in media and web design applications, having worked with a large range of businesses. He was on the ground developing innovative design for the startup company which became Macromedia. Commenting on his philosophy of user interface, "How to move through an application online should be obvious, I always defer to the 'less is more' mantra when I can."

Gary Dixon

After 33 years with the U. S. Geological Survey, geologist Gary Dixon started his own company, Southwest Geology, in Blackfoot, Idaho. Dixon specializes in geologic framework studies, ground-water resources, geologic mapping and other geophysical investigations. Dixon excels at collaborating with other experts in the geosciences to solve the kind of problems facing many urban communities today. He has also led geologic efforts on many extensive and high-profile projects with the Southern Nevada Water Authority, water supplier for the perpetually parched city of Las Vegas.

Location: Pocatello, Idaho

Peter Rowley

Pete Rowley is a field geologist and hydrogeologist who lives with his wife Dawna on a 6-acre mini-ranch in rural SW Utah, with views to the east of the Hurricane fault and the NW part of Zion National Park. A field geologist is a generalist who does his best thinking in the field, preferably during day-long traverses in remote mountains doing geologic mapping, but also using research methods to solve practical problems on any geologic topic. Pete has spent a wonderful career doing such research, primarily in the western United States. After getting a doctorate, he spent two years teaching college in the Midwest, then was hired as a geologist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Denver to map geology in the last unexplored mountains in Antarctica. In the year 2000, Pete retired from the USGS after 30 years, taught college for a year, and then started his own geologic consulting business, Geologic Mapping, Inc.

Location: New Harmony, Utah

Pete Townsend

Mr. Townsend has eighteen years experience as a consulting hydrogeologist and engineer. Mr. Townsend received his Bachelor of Science in geological engineering in 1987 and began his career as a geotechnical engineer with Golder Associates. In 1991, Mr. Townsend received a Master of Engineering degree from the Colorado School of Mines. Following a two-month geotechnical engineering project in Indonesia, Mr. Townsend joined the ground-water modeling group at Dames & Moore. This internationally recognized modeling team developed and maintained ground-water modeling software and provided practical modeling solutions on projects throughout the world. In 1999, Mr. Townsend took a position with an Internet technology firm, developing web-enabled devices. Mr. Townsend's responsibilities included management of software and hardware development teams and coordination of co-development partnerships with corporations that include Motorola, AT&T, Sun Microsystems, and IBM. Mr. Townsend returned to the field of hydrogeology, joining NewFields in 2001 and becoming partner in 2003.

Location: Denver, Colorado

Bill Wingle

Bill Wingle's career started at the Colorado School of Mines as a Research Professor. He concentrated on geostatistics and simulation, and developed open source software (UNCERT) combining these tools with groundwater models (MODFLOW and MT3D) and visualization. He took a break from groundwater for a few years and developed commercial software to control home and office automation hardware. He is back now mixing his technical strengths consulting in hydrogeology, geostatistics, modeling, and software development.

Bill's experience in groundwater modeling, statistics, and extensive software engineering expertise enabled him to develop open-source software designed to integrate groundwater and contaminant transport models, geostatistics, and computer visualization. His software has been distributed in over 40 countries and applied in petroleum, mining, environmental, forestry, and other industries. He has been a senior software engineer on teams developing commercial software for home and office automation.

Location: Denver, Colorado

Keith Turner

Keith joined the Colorado School of Mines faculty in 1972 and currently is Emeritus Professor of Geological Engineering. Prior to joining Mines, taught at the University of Toronto, and worked as an Engineering Geologist for the Ontario and Canadian Federal governments. For three years (1999-2002), he served as Professor of Engineering Geology at Delft University of Technology in The Netherlands, and divided his time between Mines and Delft. This position coincided with a period of renewal and expansion of infrastructure in The Netherlands, demanding novel geological and geotechnical engineering approaches for assessing soft ground conditions, coastal protection works, and use of underground space. This resulted in consultations with several European Geological Surveys concerning their responses to challenges in spatial data management, visualization, and analysis. Dr Turner received the 2010 Roy W Crum Distinguished Service Award from the Transportation Research Board (TRB), a component of the National Academy of Science.

Location: Golden, Colorado

Nutgraf Productions

NutGraf Productions is a North Carolina-based media production company that helps clients shape complex information into simple messages for films, websites, presentations, and a host of other social media and multimedia projects. The firm liaises with professionals from the worlds of journalism, TV and film production, and animation to deliver cutting-edge visualizations and media projects. (One of the firm's scriptwriters is a longtime science writer for Discover, Seed and Wired magazines.) NutGraf managed production, research, and story development for two animated films on the subject of climate change and water resource management for the Renaissance Computing Institute/National Environmental Modeling and Analysis Center, a collaborative institute headquartered in part at the University of North Carolina. The films are part of RENCI/NEMAC's Water in Western North Carolina series. The firm has developed teachers' guides and environmental outreach curricula for Edens Lost & Found, a PBS-TV mini-series on the topic of urban sustainability.

NutGraf principal Denise Kiernan is a 20-year veteran journalist, author and TV/film producer with a master's degree in environmental education from New York University. Kiernan has produced for ESPN, MSNBC and other television outlets. She has written popular books on history, mathematics, personal finance and science for both adults and children, and has been published in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Saveur, Discover and other national publications.

Location: Asheville, NC