---
type: Webpage
title: "MESA team"
description: "The people building MESA: investigators, staff, and students at the University of New Mexico, the University of Arizona, and UNC-Chapel Hill / RENCI, with each person's role and institution"
resource: https://idss-mesa.github.io/team.html
tags: [site, team, people, unm, arizona, renci]
status: stable
generated: { by: "claude/opus-5.5", at: "2026-10-19T00:00:00Z" }
stale_after: "2027-03-10T00:00:00Z"
sources:
  - id: team-src
    resource: https://github.com/idss-mesa/idss-mesa.github.io/blob/main/team.html
    title: "MESA team page source (team.html)"
    author: "team:idss-mesa"
---

# MESA team

**Three institutions. One team.**

MESA is built by investigators, staff, and students at the University of New
Mexico, the University of Arizona, and UNC-Chapel Hill / RENCI.[^team-src]

This document is the Markdown twin of
<https://idss-mesa.github.io/team.html>.

## The team

| Name | Role |
|------|------|
| Tyson L. Swetnam, Ph.D. | Principal Investigator · UNM |
| Arthur B. Maccabe, Ph.D. | Co-PI · Arizona site lead |
| David Ebert, Ph.D. | Co-PI · Chief AI & Data Science Officer · Arizona |
| Lei Cao, Ph.D. | Co-PI · Lakehouse lead · Arizona |
| Terrell Russell, Ph.D. | Co-PI · Data Mesh Lead · RENCI Site Lead |
| Alaina Martinez | Program Manager · UNM |
| Illyoung Choi, Ph.D. | Research Software Engineer · Arizona |
| Kory Draughn | Chief Technologist · RENCI |
| Alan King | Senior Software Developer · RENCI |
| Justin James | Applications Engineer · RENCI |
| Sarah Roberts | Research Software Engineer · Arizona |
| Tony Edgin | Data Curator · Arizona |
| Edwin Skidmore | Cloud Orchestration / Infrastructure · CyVerse |
| Greg Chism, Ph.D. | EOT Lead · Senior Personnel · Arizona |
| Jingdi Chen, Ph.D. | 5G/6G Networking · Arizona |
| CK Chan, Ph.D. | Astronomer · Arizona |
| Wolfgang Jentner, Ph.D. | Human-Computer Interaction · Arizona |
| Junjia Guo | PhD Student · Arizona |
| Pengxin Wang | PhD Student · Arizona |
| Junyong Zhao | PhD Student · Arizona |
| Linan Zheng | PhD Student · Arizona |

MESA is hiring; see [MESA Hiring](hiring.md). Write to the PI at
<mailto:tswetnam@unm.edu>. The rest of the site starts at [MESA](home.md).

[^team-src]: MESA team page source (team.html)