Yolande is interested in large scale hydrological modeling of the Congo Basin using remote sensed data. She came in the US in from the Democratic Republic of the Congo as a Fulbright scholar to pursue a Master in Water and Wetland Resource completed at SUNY/ESF (2007). In 2012, she joined the Geographical Sciences Department at the University of Maryland  to pursue her PhD Program under Professor Matthew C. Hansen, a program she started at the Geospatial Science & Engineering at the Geographic Information Science Center of Excellence (GIScCE) at South Dakota State University. Yolande had previously been funded by START/PACOM (US National Science Foundation/ US Climate Change Science Program) on a project entitled :“Satellite-derived Rainfall Estimates (TRMM products) used for Hydrological Predictions of the Congo River flow”. To pursue her PhD, Yolande was initially funded by a USGS - SWERA (Solar and Wind Energy Resource Assessment) NASA project, then by the USAID’s Central Africa Regional Program for the Environment (CARPE) at UMD (to this day) and by a NASA Earth System Science Fellowship Awarded to her to investigate Hydrological response to land cover and land use change in the Congo Basin.