Christopher Oates

I'm a PhD student in Biological and Agricultural Engineering (BAE) at North Carolina State University (NC State), where I focus on water quality monitoring, nutrient pollution, and environmental systems analysis. I am also concurrently pursuing a Master of Science in Engineering Education, which complements my research with formal study of teaching, learning, and engineering education. My doctoral work brings together modeling, sensor data, and geospatial techniques to understand how water is tracked across landscapes and how those decisions shape what we know (and don’t know) about our changing environment.

I work on how we measure environmental change and what gets overlooked in the process. That includes designing better ways to interpret trends, improving the spatial logic of monitoring networks, and building tools that make data more transparent and defensible. I’m especially interested in long-term datasets, uncertainty, and the assumptions baked into environmental decision-making.

I'm a National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellow, part of the NSF-funded program that supports early-career scientists and engineers. I've also received support from the U.S. Geological Survey Southeast Climate Adaptation Science Center Global Change Research Fellows Program, the Science and Technologies for Phosphorus Sustainability (STEPS) Center Director’s Fellowship, and the NC State University Provost’s Doctoral Fellowship, each of which has helped shape the direction, depth, and impact of my research.

While I began my time at NC State as an architecture major (and I still do love art), transferring into the BAE Department has been one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. Adding Environmental Sciences as a second major gave me the flexibility to explore systems thinking, data, and policy together, and I am thankful and grateful for my time in the College of Natural Resources. I graduated summa cum laude in May 2023 with a double major and was part of the Caldwell Fellows program, a community of some of the liveliest, kindest, and most inspiring people on campus, to whom I owe much of my personal and professional growth.