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Mary Poulton, Ph.D.

Co-Founder, Vice President and Director of AI Modeling

Mary Poulton is a woman of firsts, including being the first woman to lead an engineering department in the 115 year history of the University of Arizona.

Dr. Poulton earned her Ph.D. in geological engineering from the University of Arizona in 1990 and joined the faculty that year, later leading the Mining and Geological Engineering Department from 2000 to 2014 and co-founding and directing the interdisciplinary Lowell Institute for Mineral Resources which focused on interdisciplinary sustainable resource development topics. As a Distinguished Professor she had joint appointments in Geosciences, Public Health, and Law. She is currently Distinguished Professor Emerita of Mining and Geological Engineering, University of Arizona.
Co-developer of NOAH’s patented real-time decision support system for water management, Mary contributes her expertise in AI and earth science to solving complex water management problems. She has spent more than 35 years researching and developing neural network applications. Her research projects have taken her to China, Mongolia, Australia, Peru, Chile, Mexico, Russia, and Canada.
Mary has more than 100 publications, presentations, and reports on the application of neural networks to pattern recognition problems in the earth sciences, including geophysics, mining, mineral and petroleum exploration, hydrology, and atmospheric science. She is the author of a book on the use of neural networks for geophysical data analysis. She has led or participated in over $27 million in research funding.
She has chaired the Mine Safety and Health Research Advisory Committee for NIOSH. Mary was appointed to serve on three National Research Council Committees including co-authoring the 2007 report on critical minerals. She chaired the National Academies Committee on Earth Resources. She was elected Secretary of the American Geosciences Institute. She is a Fellow of the Society of Mining, Metallurgy and Exploration. Mary was awarded the National Engineering Award in 2017, an award first given to the astronaut Neil Armstrong. She has also received the Daniel Jackling Award for innovation in mineral resources and the McConnell Award for innovation in health and safety training.
Mary has given testimony before Congress on workforce issues in the mining industry and helped draft the Energy and Mineral Schools Re-Investment Act which passed the US House of Representatives in 2006.
Mary has worked for the Hydraulics Branch of the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers, Rock Island District, and for the Pittsburgh and Midway Mining Company. She has consulted for the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, the World Bank, and the U.S. National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health.
Growing up in a small farming town near the Mississippi River, Mary is keenly aware of the interconnectedness of food, energy, and water systems and the need for integrated systems-level thinking. Data-driven decision making, optimization, and predictive tools are increasingly allowing us to feed more people with less energy and water. Having seen the devastation of floods, droughts, and storms, Mary is also interested in how built and rural environments can be more resilient to powerful natural forces.

Mary is at northern Idaho’s beautiful Coeur d’Alene Lake which was formed by the Great Missoula floods 12,000 to 15,000 years ago when a natural dam formed and blocked the Coeur d’Alene and Saint Joe rivers. The Lake’s outlet is the Spokane River which flows through Spokane, WA to eventually meet the Snake River. The namesake of the lake, the Coeur d’Alene tribe, has its reservation on its shores and has relied on its bounty for generations. This one lake intersects multiple stakeholder interests from food to recreation to housing to energy and industry.  Coeur d’Alene Lake is truly the heart of a large, complex, and life-sustaining hydrologic system in the Inland Northwest of the United States.