Jill Roberta Kelly is a part-time lecturer at the Yale School of Public Health and the University of Pennsylvania Department of Earth & Environmental Science Master’s Program. She earned a doctorate in Forestry and Environmental Studies in 2019 at the Yale School for the Environment, a M.A. in Geography in 2013 from the University of Connecticut, and a B.S. in Mathematics from Yale College in 1991.
Jill specializes in the teaching of GIS and other tools for spatial analysis. She often supports others’ research projects on a wide diversity of topics including nursing home preparedness and response to climate-related disasters in the US, the spatial distribution of tick-borne diseases in New England, 20th Century rainfall in Syria and Iraq, 3D modeling of archeological sites in Malawi, the relationship between historical red-lining and modern-day community energy burden in the US, the patterns of spread of COVID-19, and models of travel-time from US Civil War garrisons. When left to her own research, Jill is concerned about spatial aggregation effects (particularly in rasters and indices), critical cartography and GIS ethics, and public school funding.
Jill’s Ph.D. dissertation considered the role of the Modifiable Areal Unit Problem in lidar measurements aggregated for forest biomass estimation. Her master’s work documented historical changes in fractal dimension in the urban landscape as recorded in aerial photographs.
GIS is for Everyone 