Zack Parisa's Forest Inventory Software

When Zack Parisa decided to become a forester at age 13, one incentive was avoiding a desk job like the one held by his father, a NASA rocket scientist. Back then, Parisa spent all his free hours exploring the Alabama woods. He knew where to find snakes and where the deer slept. He envisioned a career that would let him stay outdoors forever.

These days, Parisa doesn’t stop programming until he gets a nudge from his plott hound, Zoey. Over the past five years, the 29-year-old Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies graduate has developed a new method for taking forest inventories. Boston-based SilviaTerra, the business he co-founded in 2010 with fellow Yale grad Max Uhlenhuth, uses Parisa’s method to help foresters tally the size, number, and species of trees they oversee. The detailed inventories help foresters maximize timber yields or locate ideal mushroom habitat.