Madaline Young
Soil Specialist
Madaline is passionate about protecting natural resources to support growers and long-term crop production. She has a diverse research background in soil and environmental sciences, various types of farming systems, and geospatial applications. At EarthOptics, she works with both the field ops and data science teams on R&D projects.
Born and raised in the Coastal Plains of NC, Madaline grew up an avid equestrian with a strong appreciation for rural landscapes, starting her education with a B.S. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Since then, she has traveled extensively for M.S. degrees in Geography as well as Agro- and Ecosystems Engineering from the University of Leuven in Belgium. In East Africa, she gained experience in field work and soil sampling while investigating food security in Northern Burundi, agroecological systems in southern Ethiopia, and soil characteristics in the banana-based farming systems of Mount Kilimanjaro. Madaline is currently finishing her Ph.D. from Wageningen University in the Netherlands, the top agricultural university in the world, where she is developing a decision support framework that assesses and maps the impacts of agronomic practices on sustainability indicators in Europe.
In her spare time, Madaline enjoys cooking and anything food-related, latin and kizomba dancing, making use of her Dutch/French, pretending to learn the ukulele, and outdoor hobbies such as tennis, yoga, or stand up paddle boarding on the Pamlico River. She lives in the “original” Washington - in eastern NC.