Ricky Robertson is a Research Fellow in the Foresight and Policy Modeling Unit. His work harnesses GIS and parallelized computation to help with research problems of a spatial nature and/or those which are prohibitively difficult to tackle using conventional computational resources, particularly in regards to the interaction between the land surface, water, and human activity. Prior to his work with IFPRI, he completed environmental- and water-related postdocs at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in the Civil and Environmental Engineering as well as Agricultural and Consumer Economics departments. His PhD research (also at the University of Illinois) revolved around empirically modeling land use decisions using large datasets to estimate discrete choice models. Ricky also holds a dual degree in Mathematics Education and Physics from Andrews University in Michigan.