Jim Peterson PE, PLS, Ph.D.

Jim has been engaged as a professional surveyor and engineer, educator, and researcher with his Remote Pilot Certificate. His career, which began in the early 1990, took him across North America, Europe, and Australia promoting mobile mapping and unmanned aircraft systems (UAS). He is currently an Assistant Professor of the UAS degree at Southeast Missouri State where he also teaches surveying and construction related classes. He was assistant professor at Southeast Missouri State from 2017 to 2019, He was also an adjunct professor at Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville (2005-2017) where he completed his M.S. in Civil Engineering (C.E.) and helped start the Land Surveying Specialization. He lectured at Missouri University of Science and Technology (MST) (2009-2011) where he completed his Ph.D. in Civil Engineering (2015) specializing in surveying with UAS. MST is also where he obtained his B.S.C.E. (1991).

He was a Technical Manager at the Center of Expertise for Photogrammetric Mapping at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. He has been a Vice-President of aerial mapping companies, managed and owned a number of engineering, surveying, and construction companies. He was also a Domain Expert for Trimble Navigation and Gatewing.

Jim is passionate about teaching and his research. He is part of the Missouri Transect, a research project through the National Science Foundation using UAS to collect high accuracy imagery to model the effects of climate on plants.