2024 Maryland-Delaware-DC Awards
Join us in celebrating those at our Center who have been recognized for going above and beyond in their efforts to support the U.S. Geological Survey and its mission.
Employee of the Year
In recognition of her outstanding leadership contributions to the mission of the USGS Maryland-Delaware-Washington D.C. Water Science Center, hydrologic technician Betsy Marchand has been named our Center’s 2024 Employee of the Year!
Betsy serves the Center as lead technician and local database manager for groundwater data collection. She trains and mentors newer staff in the proper groundwater data collection and data management protocols, drawing on her extensive knowledge and knack for communicating technical details.
Betsy is the Center's go-to person for groundwater database issues, questions, and, of course, everything pertaining to groundwater data. She works in the background to seamlessly solve countless database issues. Betsy serves as the liaison and project coordinator for the spring and fall statewide groundwater synoptics, conducted in cooperation with Maryland Geological Survey (MGS).
Betsy also was a co-author of an Open-File Report entitled “Potentiometric surface maps of selected confined aquifers in Southern Maryland and Maryland's Eastern Shore”, in cooperation with MGS. https://www.usgs.gov/publications/potentiometric-surface-maps-selected-confined-aquifers-southern-maryland-and-marylands
Betsy’s commitment to generating the highest-quality groundwater data, willingness to share her expertise, and dedication to her work and to the USGS demonstrates why she's deserving of our Employee of the Year award!
Stepped Up Award
We want to recognize those in our Maryland-Delaware-DC center who took up extra duties to support the mission of the U.S. Geological Survey.
Kyle Hurley - For taking the leadership role on the regional Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning (AI/ML) capability team.
Adam Mumford - For taking the leadership role on the regional PFAS capability team.
Keamo Coleman - For taking on the role of the Center’s Security Manager.
Tristan Mohs, Jacob Mavrogeorge, AJ Greise, and Nick Giro - For developing and running a very successful regional field training session.
Sarah Queen - For leadership on the Data Quality Management Team as we continually work to streamline and improve our internal review processes.
Samantha Woomer – For stepping up during a week with only two people in the office, including clearing a site that was damaged by a storm.
Michael Wieczorek has been awarded our Center’s 2024 Publication of the Year for his updates to the highly downloaded data release, “Select Attributes for NHDPlus Version 2.1 Reach Catchments and Modified Network Routed Upstream Watersheds for the Conterminous United States (ver. 4.0, August 2023).”
This publication reached over a million downloads, the first time in ScienceBase history!
The data release was created to help researchers study watersheds without having to perform specialized geospatial processing, which has national implications across multiple agencies and programs. The quality and complexity of the data release is a testament to the many high-quality products Mike produces on a regular basis.
Hydrologist Anna McClain was awarded our Center’s 2024 Efficiency Award for creating a system to store sampling data which greatly improved efficiency in setting up and conducting microcosm studies. Congrats Anna!
Physical scientist Jason Chase has been awarded our Center’s 2024 Program Development award for developing a successful proposal with a new cooperator to address lead contamination at a firing range. Congrats Jason!
Innovation Award
Adam Mumford and Tyler Bowser are being awarded the 2024 Innovation Award for their great work with using Autonomous Surface Vehicle to study groundwater seeps in Lower Darby Creek. Adam and Tyler were able to modify the technology to successfully collect and process data for this project.
Best Mentor Award
We want to recognize those who have received our 2024 Best Mentor/Teacher award.
Sindy Mejia: This past year, Ms. Mejia has helped newer employees on the Fate and Bioremediation team, including setting up microcosm experiments, developing checklists, documenting procedures, taking notes, and creating guides. Sindy goes the extra mile, working long hours to help newer employees complete unfamiliar duties, answering questions and solving problems, all in addition to her regular work.
Kendall Wnuk: Mr. Wnuk has graciously taken up the role of teaching other employees to handle remotely sensed data. He has shared insights on past projects and guided a group through the process of submitting proposals. Kendall is available to debug code and is always willing to share his scripts to ensure efficient operations. He encouraged other employees to keep workflows organized and also checked in with others to answer questions and offer help.
Kelly McVicker: Ms. McVicker has been an outstanding teacher, providing invaluable guidance and advice that advances employees technical skills and fosters self-reliance and confidence. Kelly has provided guidance for multiple people and is proactive in seeking out opportunities to mentor newer employees or provide extra practice of skills. She frequently shares tips and tricks to make work more effective and efficient. Kelly actively looks out for mentees and goes above and beyond to support and make newer employees feel like a valuable part of the team.
JEDI Award
Emily Majcher and Andrew Sekellick are the recipients of our Center’s 2024 JEDI (Justice, Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion) award.
Ms. Majcher and Mr. Sekellick are co-leads on the Center’s JEDI team. Emily also brought an Intergenerational Sensitivity/Bystander Intervention training to the Center.
Mr. Sekellick is also working on a project to investigate the correlation between water quality contamination and underserved communities.
Best Project Award
Congrats to Lillian Gorman Sanisaca and Kyle Hurley on receiving our Best Project Award in recognition of their contributions to the RSPARROW 2.0 project!
RSPARROW is a system of open-source R scripts and functions for executing and evaluating SPARROW models, a model which estimates the amount of a contaminant transported from inland watersheds to larger water bodies by linking monitoring data with information on watershed characteristics and contaminant sources.
New features in RSPARROW 2.0 include tools to evaluate and model time-variant SPARROW datasets; producing model prediction maps of monitoring sites, stream reaches, and catchments through time; evaluating model performance at each timestep; and executing climate change and land-use change scenarios using an interactive R Shiny interface to predict effects on contaminant loads.