Maggie R Davis

Bio

Maggie's work as a systems engineer and data scientist in the natural resources domains involves project management and technical contributions on systems-optimization and decision-science for large multi-institutional initiatives. Her work increasingly bridges biomass, wildfire risk, industrial systems, and advanced computing using economic tools. She leads ORNL-developed modeling capabilities and data dissemination, enabling national-scale analyses for applications including wildfire risk and exposure reduction, biomass mobilization, and supply-chain resilience. Maggie provides technical leadership on several nationally significant efforts relevant to energy expansion using domestic biomass resources: manages the Bioenergy Knowledge Discovery Framework (bioenergyKDF.ornl.gov) supporting the 2023 Billion-Ton Report (BT23) and led the forestry analysis for BT23. She was also the lead author and modeler for the agricultural residues and dedicated energy crops analysis in the 2016 Billion-Ton Report. Earlier in her career, Davis led data management for ARM.gov, supporting a global network of atmospheric sensors, and she continues to contribute to open science, FAIR data practices, and AI-ready data infrastructure. She is active in national professional societies, including the Society of American Foresters, and has contributed to leadership and advisory efforts related to science, data, and workforce development.

Professional Experience

R&D Scientist, Transportation Analytics and Decision Science (TADS)  (Jan 2023 – present)

Researching interdisciplinary strategies using decision science; leading R&D research on biomass availability for to meet US energy expansion and critical material needs. Highlights include: PI on two wildfire projects, one co-product project and one data repository in FY26 for BETO; FY24-25 highlights include BT23 report co-author, lead of Forestry Chapter, lead of FAIR data (bioenergyKDF); Publications: Applied Energy (IF 11.446); 3. Intl. J. of Enviro. Res. & Public Health (IF 4.614) & Forestry International Journal (IF 3.2):

• Lead: Fuel2Fuel wildfire risk reduction biomass analysis project
• Lead: modeling and tool development to inform deployment of bioenergy crops for specific regions with known nature-based solutions (NbS) markets that can enable cost competitiveness, and benefit key identified stakeholder communities.
• Lead: Forest-based biomass resource potential (economic assessment), DOE’s 2023 “Billion Ton” report & Data Portal
• Lead, Environmental Task: Centralized Health and Environmental Data Repository (C-HER).
• Lead, Ag-Forestry Markets Task: NetZero-ARMADA: Scalable Multi-Sector Analysis Platform for the Energy Transition

R&D Scientist, Data Science & Integration (2021 –2023)

Leading data management at ARM, a DOE National User Facility, and leading R&D research on biomass availability for low-carbon strategies to meet US energy needs. Highlights include: 3 Publications, 1 dataset &:

• Lead: Modernized biomass resource assessment POLYSYS partial equilibrium model for high-performance computing and moved manual analysis of data to automated open-source workbooks
• Manager: team of 3 responsible for all metadata for ARM data: >2 PB spanning 30 years: Applied knowledge of statistics, mathematics, data modeling and high-performance data architectures, and advanced computing to integrate and prepare data

R&D Associate Scientist, ARM & Bioenergy Resources & Engineering Systems      (2016 – 2021)

Modernized ARM metadata management, led resource modeling and modernization of models on HPC, standards development and bioenergy sustainability assessments. Highlights include: 10 Publications, 8 datasets &:

• Lead, Billion Ton 2016: Volume 1 Lead author and lead energy crop and agricultural residues modeler (POLYSYS); Volume 2 author for Land Management (Ch 3) evaluating the impacts of biomass production
• Lead, BioKDF Sustainability website: Primary content developer, design
• Lead author on Regulation of Genetically Modified Trees, Utilization of Woody Biomass for Energy, Committee on Forest Policy, Society of American Foresters

R&D Assistant Scientist, Resource modeling, International trade (2014-2016)

Supported 2 projects for assessments of sustainability and lead modeler on dedicated energy crops for BT16. Highlights include:

• Secretariat (Working Group on Indirect Effects, ISO13065- Sustainability of Bioenergy): International Standards Organization | Geneva, CH; 2012-01-01 to 2015-09-30: Addressed key barriers, e.g., related to sustainability assessment methods, food security, land-use change (LUC), reference case and carbon measurement; Led final report, annotated bibliography, and 20 international webinars
• Contributing investigator for report, “Brief Perspectives on Expanding Advanced Energy Sources in Brazil: Part 1:  Biofuels and Bioenergy” 2015.

Awards

• Science Serving Society, 2016.
• ARM Service Award, 2020, 2021
• Emerging Leader Award, ORNL Women’s Alliance Council’s, March 2023

Education

PhD -ongoing- in Systems Engineering, Colorado State University (start: August 2023)

M.S., Forestry Wildlife and Fisheries Sciences, University of Tennessee, TN, USA  (2011)

• International research: Eucalyptus, Minas Gerais Brazil (Jan-Nov, 2010)

B.A., Economics and Geography, University of Tennessee, TN, USA (2007)

Ongoing:

• Data Science & other training  (2016 to present):
  • Continuing Forestry Education (CFE) SAF: Enhancing the precision of broad-scale forest growing stock and stock change estimates with small area estimation (2021); Data Science for Forestry (2018)
  • Python (SciPy), annually 2017-2024
  • Disciplined Agile Scrum Master training (Project Management Institute), 2020
  • Modeling trade of bioproducts, Agricultural Economics (University of Tennessee) (2017)

Professional Service

• Baker Center Affiliate, University of TN 2024-Present
• Chair, Bioenergy, Climate Change & Carbon (E3) WG: Society of American Foresters| Washington, DC, US; 2022 -Present.
• Chair, ESTD Women in Science and Engineering (WiSE) until January 2023 and advisor to chair January-December 2023.
• Invited delegate: Women’s Forest Congress (October 2022).
• Lead, Research Theme, Bioenergy, Climate Change & Carbon (E3) Working Group, Society of American Foresters| Washington, DC, US, 2020-2021. Chair the special session, Data for bioproduct assessments in November of 2021

Professional Affiliations

AAAS,

Society of American Foresters (SAF),

American Geophysical Union (AGU),

ASTM

Specialized Equipment

DATASETS

1. Davis, Maggie R. 2021. Integrated land management scenarios: regional demand of bioethanol for select counties (single refinery) and crops. https://doi.org/10.11578/1797943. Select visualizations available.
2. Davis, Maggie R., 2020. RegionalDemand-CornStover_INL_BT16BC1030-40-50 (data available 6/19/20) doi 10.11578/1633888
3. Davis, Maggie R., 2020. stovertillage2019-bc1040-060 (data available 6/9/20) doi 10.11578/1632327
4. Langholtz, Matthew; Busch, Ingrid; Kasturi, Abishek; Hilliard, Mike R.; McFarlane, Joanna; Tsouris, Costas; Mukherjee, Srijib; Omitaomu, Olufemi A.; Kotikot, Susan M.; Allen-Dumas, Melissa R.; DeRolph, Christopher R.; Davis, Maggie R; Paris, Esther S.          Data and interactive visualization for "The economic accessibility of CO2 sequestration through bioenergy with carbon capture and sequestration (BECCS) in the US" submitted to the journal "Land", 2020 (data available 8/6/20) doi 10.11578/1647453
5. Davis, M. 2018. Dataset: NewBio_SwgMxgWillowOnly: Price Scenarios at $54 and $119 simulated for Switchgrass, Miscanthus and Willow production from 2017 to 2040. Feedstock Production, Supporting Data available on the BioKDF 01/01/2018. DOI 10.11578/1468424
6. Davis, MR. CH Hellwinkel, L. Eaton, MH Langholtz, A. Turhollow, C Brandt, A Myers, 2016. Agricultural Baseline (BL0) scenario of the 2016 Billion-Ton Report (data available 7/13/16) doi 10.11578/1337884
7. Davis, MR. CH Hellwinkel, L. Eaton, MH Langholtz, A. Turhollow, C Brandt, A Myers, 2016. Base-Case 1% Yield Increase (BC1), All Energy Crops scenario of the 2016 Billion Ton Report (data available 7/13/16) doi 10.11578/1340497
8. Davis, MR. CH Hellwinkel, L. Eaton, MH Langholtz, A. Turhollow, C Brandt, A Myers, 2016. 2% Yield Increase (HH2), All Energy Crops scenario of the 2016 Billion Ton Report (data available 7/13/16) doi 10.11578/1340541
9. Davis, MR. CH Hellwinkel, L. Eaton, MH Langholtz, A. Turhollow, C Brandt, A Myers, 2016. 3% Yield Increase (HH3), All Energy Crops scenario of the 2016 Billion Ton Report (data available 7/13/16) doi 10.11578/1340543
10. Davis, MR. CH Hellwinkel, L. Eaton, MH Langholtz, A. Turhollow, C Brandt, A Myers, 2016. 4% Yield Increase (HH4), All Energy Crops scenario of the 2016 Billion Ton Report (data available 7/13/16) doi 10.11578/1340546

Trademarks and Patents

Langholtz, Matthew H., Davis, Maggie, Hellwinckel, Chad, De La Torre Ugarte, Daniel, Efroymson, Rebecca, Jacobson, Ryan, Milbrandt, Anelia, Coleman, Andre, Davis, Ryan, Kline, Keith L., Badgett, Alex, Curran, Scott, Schmidt, Erik, Theiss, Timothy, Fried, Jeremy, English, Burton, Lambert, Lixia, Cook, Hope, Field, John, Abt, Robert, Parish, Esther, Rossi, David, Abt, Karen, Brandt, Craig, Saltiel, Troy, Davis, Kristen, Otwell, Anne, Clark, Robin, Miller, Lee, Brandeis, Consuelo, Oyedeji, Oluwafemi, Klein, Bruno, Wiatrowski, Matthew R., Hawkins, Troy, Ou, Longwen, Singh, Udayan, Zhang, Jingyi, Gao, Song, Snowden-Swan, Lesley, Valdez, Peter, Xu, Yiling, Zhu, Yunhua, De angelo, Julianne, Nepal, Prakash, Prestemon, Jeffery, Champion, Kathleen, Saenz, Benjamin, Harrison, Eliza, O'dea, Claire, Cooney, Gregory, Hoffmann, Jeffrey, Shell, Michael, and Walker, Lee. 2023 Billion-Ton Report: An Assessment of U.S. Renewable Carbon Resources. United States: N. p., 2024. Web. doi:10.2172/2441098.

[Equivalent to: U.S. Department of Energy. 2024. 2023 Billion‐Ton Report: An Assessment of U.S. Renewable Carbon Resources. M. H. Langholtz (Lead). Oak Ridge, TN: Oak Ridge National Laboratory. ORNL/SPR-2024/3103. doi: 10.23720/BT2023/2316165.]

Publications

Other Publications