Graduate Profile

Conducting PhD research at the bottom of the world

Jeff Zehnder — Thu, 01 Oct 2026 17:01:21 +0000

Conducting PhD research at the bottom of the world Jeff Zehnder Thu, 10/01/2026 - 11:01

Above: Natalie Aranda
Header Image: Working with a team in the McMurdo Dry Valleys

Name: Natalie Aranda
Advisor: Diane McKnight
Lab: Organic Matter Spectroscopy Lab
Program: 2nd Year Environmental Engineering PhD Student

Natalie Aranda is conducting PhD research in one of the most extreme and inaccessible places on Earth: the McMurdo Dry Valleys in Antarctica. It is home to plants and living organisms that thrive in an area where life otherwise approaches its environmental limits -- arid conditions, very low temperatures, and a day/night cycle where the sun stays above the horizon for months at a time followed by darkness that lasts equally long periods.

What first interested you in engineering?

I grew up in the Inland Empire, a region in southern California, and have always been fascinated by nature. I did my undergrad in Ecology, Evolution and Behavior to learn more about how the natural world works. I loved what I learned but felt like the concepts were too theoretical. I first turned to engineering as a way to learn more applicable science.

I decided on environmental engineering as a way to bring some of the ecological principles I learned in my undergraduate degree into applied science. I completed my master's degree at �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder in 2024, and am now in the second year of my PhD.

Why did you decide to come to �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder for grad school?

I was interested in pursuing a research-based degree and found the projects that professors were doing at �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder to be very fascinating.

Many projects combined engineering and ecological principles in a way that I didn’t see in other schools, which made �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder stand out for me.

What do you love about �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder?

�鶹��Ѱ��Boulder has opened up many opportunities for me, including the opportunity to teach, conduct research, and present my findings at conferences both in state and abroad. I have also had the wonderful opportunity to conduct my research in Antarctica.

Natalie Aranda is conducting PhD research in one of the most extreme and inaccessible places on Earth: the McMurdo Dry Valleys in Antarctica. It is home to...

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Expanding access to clean, safe, and sustainable drinking water

Jeff Zehnder — Mon, 21 Sep 2026 14:46:00 +0000

Expanding access to clean, safe, and sustainable drinking water Jeff Zehnder Mon, 09/21/2026 - 08:46

Name: Melanie Gamboa
Advisor: Karl Linden
Program: 3rd Year PhD Student, Environmental Engineering

I am originally from New Jersey. Although I did not grow up around mountains, I always knew I loved being outdoors and learning about the environment. From an early age, I was drawn to math and science, even though I did not fully understand what engineering was or what a career in engineering could look like.

I attended boarding school in Florida, where I developed an even stronger appreciation for the outdoors and the environment. By my junior year of high school, I knew I wanted to pursue a career where I could help protect the environment and improve the lives of the people who depend on it. Environmental engineering felt like the natural fit.

One of my biggest passions is providing access to clean water. My dad is an immigrant from Costa Rica, and his childhood household was always a five-minute walk to drinking water directly from a stream.

He often says, “Costa Rica has the best water in the world.” My desire to contribute to cleaner water globally comes largely from my childhood. Having spent significant time with my family in Costa Rica growing up, I experienced firsthand the crisp, clear, and unpolluted water near where my dad was raised.

Those experiences shaped my desire to help make clean and safe water accessible to communities around the world. That passion ultimately became one of the driving forces behind my decision to pursue environmental engineering.

I am now a third-year PhD student working in Dr. Karl Linden’s lab group. My research focuses on applying UV and other light wavelengths to water storage tanks, with the goal of developing sustainable treatment approaches for water-insecure communities. I am particularly excited by the opportunity to work on research that can have a direct impact on access to safe drinking water.

Melanie Gamboa and her dad in Costa Rica.

I chose �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder for many reasons, but my experience during Admitted Students Day had a lasting impact on me.

The professors and students I met were incredibly welcoming and enthusiastic, and I left feeling excited about the possibility of building my future at �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder.

I also met many of Karl’s current students that day, and their passion for research and their love for �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder ultimately had the biggest influence on my decision to attend. They made it easy for me to picture myself as a student here and as part of their research community.

Now that I am here, one of the things I appreciate most about �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder is the people.

The students and professors in the Environmental Engineering department are always willing to help, whether that means lending lab equipment, answering a research question, or helping someone navigate course registration. There is always someone around who is willing to lend a hand. That strong sense of community and support is one of the things that has made my experience at �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder so meaningful.

I am originally from New Jersey. Although I did not grow up around mountains, I always knew I loved being outdoors and learning about the environment. From an early age, I was...

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Studying air quality to improve human health

Jeff Zehnder — Wed, 16 Sep 2026 04:05:33 +0000

Studying air quality to improve human health Jeff Zehnder Tue, 09/15/2026 - 22:05

Patrick Wiecko at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Name: Patrick Wiecko
Hometown: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Advisor: Daven Henze
Program: 5th Year PhD Student, Environmental Engineering

Patrick Wiecko is studying studying how changes in air pollution impact global health burdens. His modeling works to quantify human health benefits of reducing pollutants like nitrogen oxide, which is generated by fossil fuel combustion.

I was born in Toronto but my family moved to St. Louis when I was just entering middle school, so I like to think that my upbringing is a fusion of the two cities’ identities.

In addition to that, my parents are both from Poland, which I think sometimes shows up unexpectedly in my personality. Growing up, I really looked up to my dad in all things and since he was an engineer, I figured I wanted to be an engineer as well. In high school I found chemistry and physics really interesting, so I decided to pursue chemical engineering in my undergrad.

However, I knew I wanted to switch professions towards the end of my senior year when it came to actually finding a job. My first internship as a chemical process engineer made me resent the monotony of daily industry work, so I decided to go in a different direction.

My research advisor pushed me towards applying to grad school for air quality research, which is how I met my current advisor. I found his modeling work very interesting and directly applicable in the real world, so I decided to join his lab where I am now starting my fifth and (hopefully) final year.

�鶹��Ѱ��Boulder was the only program that I visited and felt immediately welcomed. The current students were all very friendly and faculty were all genuinely interested in what I wanted to accomplish in grad school, and the view of the Flatirons from campus really solidified my decision. The collaborative environment within my lab also attracted me, which is something unfortunately not very common among other labs at other universities I applied.

The thing I grew to love most about �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder is the work hard-play hard atmosphere among grad students. During the week, everyone is very focused on their schoolwork or projects, but as soon as 5 o'clock rolls around on Friday it’s a different atmosphere.

From grabbing food and drinks at happy hours on Pearl Street to getting ready for a weekend backpacking trip, there is always something going on and everyone is more than happy to accommodate anyone wanting to join.

I even picked up skiing during my first year here, and I will miss the accessibility to the powder-filled mountains dearly when I leave.

Patrick Wiecko is studying studying how changes in air pollution impact global health burdens. His modeling works to quantify human health benefits of...

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Two environmental engineering students earn major National Science Foundation fellowship

Jeff Zehnder — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 15:01:13 +0000

Two environmental engineering students earn major National Science Foundation fellowship Jeff Zehnder Wed, 04/15/2026 - 09:01

Two environmental engineering graduate students have earned prestigious National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program awards.

Grace Berg and Kate Rodelli are 2026 recipients of the NSF GRFP awards, which recognize and support outstanding grad students from across the country in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields who are pursuing research-based master’s or doctoral degrees.

Awardees receive a $37,000 annual stipend and cost of education allowance for the next three years as well as professional development opportunities.

Find out about their research below:

Grace Berg

1st Year PhD Student

Advisor: Mike Hannigan
Lab: Hannigan Air Quality and Technology Research (HAQ) Lab

My proposed research focuses on leveraging low-cost sensors, activity data, and crowdsourced reporting to characterize overlapping environmental hazards—such as air pollution, extreme heat, and noise—in urban environments. My goals are to identify coincident drivers of multiple hazards and help cities be more strategic about data collection and mitigation actions.

Kate Rodelli

1st year PhD student

Advisors: Daven Henze and Kelvin Bates
Labs: Henze Group, Bates Lab

Nitrogen oxides (NOₓ) and ammonia (NH₃) are primary contributors to reactive nitrogen (Nr) deposition and react in the atmosphere to form aerosol ammonium nitrate, a key component of fine particulate matter (PM₂.₅). PM₂.₅ causes over four million premature deaths annually, and nitrogen deposition degrades ecosystems. While U.S. NOₓ emissions have declined, NH₃ emissions remain highly uncertain and are often systematically underestimated, limiting the predictive skill of air quality models such as GEOS-Chem. My research uses satellite observations to improve reactive nitrogen emission estimates. I will conduct a high-temporal-resolution joint inversion of NO₂ and NH₃, assimilating TEMPO, CrIS, and IASI satellite observations into GEOS-Chem using an ensemble-based data assimilation framework. This work will produce more accurate emission estimates that strengthen predictions of air quality and nitrogen deposition, supporting exposure assessment, ecosystem analysis, and policy-relevant decision making.

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PhD student studying how urban wildfires impact the water supply

Jeff Zehnder — Tue, 24 Feb 2026 20:55:20 +0000

PhD student studying how urban wildfires impact the water supply Jeff Zehnder Tue, 02/24/2026 - 13:55

Jeff Zehnder

Bowden collecting water samples from a stream.

Mackenzie Bowden is shining a light on water hazards in the aftermath of wildfires.

“When people think about fire, water isn’t the first thing they consider, but when you look at events like the 2021 Marshall Fire and the 2025 fires in Los Angeles, there are all these synthetic compounds that get introduced to the water supply in runoff from burned homes,” Bowden said. “We want to know what that does for people downstream who drink that water.”

Three Minute Thesis

An environmental engineering student at the �鶹��Ѱ��, Bowden has already earned accolades for her work, earning second place at the campus Three Minute Thesis Competition.

The event challenges graduate students to craft a three-minute elevator pitch for their complex—and sometimes difficult to make sense of—research in a way that even an everyday person could understand. Bowden was one of 11 presenters to take part in the competition last month.

“It’s very rare to have a dedicated audience listening to you talk about your research,” she said. “You spend all your time in the lab or writing papers, talking only to the niche audience in your field. This is about seeing how well I can discuss what I’m doing with other people.”

Fire Aftermath

Bowden came to �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder in the aftermath of the Marshall Fire, which destroyed over 1,000 homes. With a background in analytical chemistry, she began analyzing the complex compounds that result from fires at the wildland-urban interface.

“Risk assessment tends to look at specific chemicals in isolation, but chemicals don’t appear in isolation, they’re in mixtures. If you look for lead, that’s important, but what if the lead binds with things you aren’t looking for,” she said.

The ash and remnants of wildfires in forests and grasslands are comprised primarily of well-understood organic materials. With wildfires increasingly spreading to towns and cities, there is potential for more problematic pollution.

To effectively monitor those situations, Bowden has conducted hands-on research of the materials that comprise modern homes.

“I go buy construction materials like PVC pipes, fiberglass insulation, roofing materials, and burn them under controlled conditions so I can measure the organic and inorganic content of the ash as well as its toxicological potential,” she said.

Chemical Analysis

The analysis combines chromatography, mass spectrometry, and biological assays to identify resulting compounds, determine their quantities, and evaluate biological response.

“Samples contaminated by burnt PVC pipes were always more toxic than anything else, but when that burnt PVC was present with burnt wood, that toxicity was masked. It’s a prime example of how mixture interactions would have been completely misinterpreted by single chemical tests,” Bowden said.

Bowden will defend her dissertation next month. After graduation, she is seeking postdoctoral fellowships with an eye toward becoming a university professor.

“Environmental engineering is a very multidisciplinary field,” she said. “It pulls in environmental science, chemistry, biology, and ecology. It’s all these different puzzle pieces being fit together. I want to keep contributing and advancing the field.”

Bowden speaking at Three Minute Thesis

Mackenzie Bowden is shining a light on water hazards in the aftermath of wildfires. “When people think about fire, water isn’t the first thing they consider, but when you look at...

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Student designing greener buildings and a better future

Anonymous — Thu, 05 Sep 2024 22:03:07 +0000

Student designing greener buildings and a better future Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 09/05/2024 - 16:03

Jeff Zehnder

By analyzing formulas and construction blueprints, Jules Fischer-White is helping Americans build better green homes as a modeling engineer at Emu Passive Inc.

“It’s a super cool company. If an individual is going to build a house and wants it to be more energy efficient, we model it and give advice on how to improve their design,” Fischer-White said.

It is much more than simply suggesting better windows or adding insulation.

“We get plans from the architect, and I model the total floor area as well as internal net volumes of all the rooms, which gives us information for sizing the ventilation system,” he said. “We also look at the building envelope, which includes the windows, doors, and other boundary conditions. We geo-locate the project as well and include nearby trees and other shade sources so we can calculate how much sunlight will be entering each window in summer and winter.”

He began the part-time position midway through his senior year, as a chance to use what he has learned in the classroom to make the world a better place.

Fischer-White wrapped up his undergrad in May, but decided to pursue his master’s through the BAM program.

“I joined �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder in the spring of 2020, right before COVID. It took a while to get into the flow and meet people and be part of campus life and I want to enjoy my college years. In some ways it feels like I’ve only been here three years,” he said.

Drawn to science and math at a young age, Fischer-White had a unique path to �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder.

Although he is a Colorado native, his family moved to Thailand while he was still a toddler. He grew up there – and speaks fluent Thai – but their home was in a town without many opportunities for someone with a budding interest in STEM fields.

“We lived in an area that’s rated as one of the best retirement communities in the country, but there weren’t that many things to do for younger people, especially stuff in science and math,” Fischer-White said.

He returned to the United States for his junior and senior years of high school at a boarding school in Vermont.

“I’d never really had access to a chemistry lab or physics lab before. There were so many resources I had never seen. That was really exciting to me,” he said.

He decided he wanted to be an engineer, and the interdisciplinary nature of environmental engineering was particularly appealing.

Continuing to live in the United States for college made sense. While Thai universities offer engineering programs, Fischer-White said they are not accredited internationally, which would have limited his employment opportunities.

Although it had been 15 years since his family lived in Colorado, the state was still their home base, at least on paper, making �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder an easy choice.

Earning a master’s also offers Fischer-White the opportunity to learn more about another passion area: water and sanitation.

“I want to dive more into it,” Fischer-White said. “I love building science, but I also would love to work with Doctors Without Borders as a sanitary engineer. Every time they set up a hospital, they need engineers to deal with waste. It’s an area where I feel like I’ll always be able to sleep well delivering clean water to people.”

The environmental engineering graduate program offers multiple courses in water management, reuse, and sanitation. Fischer-White hopes to spend the 2024-25 academic year completing his MS before entering the workforce full-time.

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Grad student turning trash into cash

Anonymous — Tue, 09 Jul 2024 19:27:16 +0000

Grad student turning trash into cash Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 07/09/2024 - 13:27

Jeff Zehnder

Brooke Marten (left) and Prof. Sherri Cook following Marten's successful thesis defense July 1.

Brooke Marten (MEnvEngr’21, PhD’24) is engineering a better environment through high tech solid waste analysis.

Marten just completed her PhD in environmental engineering at the �鶹��Ѱ��, focused on what happens to trash after it is carted off to the landfill – and ways to turn it into a valuable product.

“My focus is on resource recovery of the organic fraction of municipal solid waste – food waste and yard trimmings,” Marten said. “You can recover valuable material that can be marketed and sold.”

Her research and PhD thesis used life cycle analysis to evaluate different solid waste strategies including composting, anaerobic digestion and especially pyrolysis, a method of breaking down organic material in the absence of oxygen at high temperatures – typically above 500 °C.

“Implementation of the more common organic waste management strategies, like anaerobic digestion and composting, has been slow, so we wanted to look particularly at the use of a novel strategy, pyrolysis, which showed real potential,” Marten said.

An emphasis of Marten’s work is how turning waste into a useful product can also reduce environmental impact. Pyrolysis results in a solid called biochar that can be used as a landfill cover material. It avoids the need to use soil or woodchips and reduces landfill emissions.

Pyrolysis can also treat landfill leachate, formed when rainwater filters through buried waste, and recovers syngas, which can be combusted for energy production.

“I have a draw to recover resources from something people view as trash, flipping the narrative. This shouldn’t be a burden; it is an opportunity to recover something,” she said.

Conducting life cycle analysis models the full implications of these environmental actions, providing a more complete picture.

“Carbon footprints are on everyone’s radar, and the analysis looks at that, but it’s actually quite a bit more complex – for example, we also look at each strategies’ potential to cause algal blooms, form smog, and contribute to ocean acidification. If our plan helps in one area but hurts in another, we want to avoid that,” she said.

The analysis also focuses on dollars and cents.

This shouldn’t be a burden; it is an opportunity to recover something." - Brooke Marten

“We can’t recommend something that’s great for greenhouse gas reduction but is totally unaffordable,” she said.

The desire for such a complete analysis grew during Marten’s undergraduate years as a civil engineering student at the University of Wisconsin – Madison. There, she observed a campus Styrofoam and foam packing material recycling program and wanted to know if was as beneficial as hoped.

“They recycled Styrofoam, but to do it they were driving these trucks all around picking it up. I wanted to know if that made sense or if it should just be landfilled,” she said.

She learned about life cycle analysis, but did not have the knowledge necessary to conduct one as an undergrad. It eventually led her to �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder and Professor Sherri Cook, who is an expert in the methodology and would become her PhD advisor.

“It’s a very marketable skillset and I knew I had to go to grad school to do it,” Marten said.

Completing such analysis is resource-intensive. Marten developed computerized process models, adding variable after variable – waste mass, material composition, energy potential, and more, to present the most complete picture possible, as the ideal answer for one municipality may not work as well for another.

“Waste is so heterogeneous, and the solutions are not one size fits all. Some parts of the country really push collection of yard waste. Others emphasize foot scraps. That composition could change the answers,” Marten said.

Her PhD thesis, “Towards Sustainable Resource Recovery: Developing and Evaluating Novel Strategies for the Organic Fraction of Municipal Solid Waste,” is now complete and Marten successfully defended on July 1.

The next chapter of her life is with Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, where she has been hired as a sustainability engineer, a job rich in research and life cycle assessments.

“They work on a lot of novel concepts at national labs, and I love research,” she said. “I’m really excited about it.”

Brooke Marten is engineering a better environment through high tech solid waste analysis. Marten just completed her PhD in environmental engineering, focused on what happens to trash after it is carted off to the landfill – and ways to turn it into a valuable product.

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Environmental engineering on an icebreaker ship at the North Pole

Anonymous — Tue, 31 Jan 2023 16:28:18 +0000

Environmental engineering on an icebreaker ship at the North Pole Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 01/31/2023 - 09:28

Jeff Zehnder

Header Image: Shelby Buckley on an ice floe near the North Pole.
Above: Researchers and the crew in front of the Kronprins Haakon.

Shelby Buckley has made the research trip of a lifetime – studying the impacts of climate change up close and personal on a five-week trip to the Arctic aboard the Kronprins Haakon icebreaking ship.

It offered a unique chance to personally collect ice core and seawater samples and experience the excitement and fears of life on top of the world.

Polar Bears

“I flew into Svalbard, Norway. It’s an Arctic island with no trees and you can’t leave the city limits without a rifle because there are so many polar bears,” Buckley said.

On the ship, they took similar precautions. Any time a team was on an ice flow, observers with rifles and binoculars kept watch, and with good reason. Over the course of the trip, Buckley saw 20 polar bears.

“I was shocked by the number. The first one I saw I think I screamed like a little girl. By the 14th one, it’s okay, another one,” Buckley said.

Buckley is studying organic matter and pollutants and as a PhD student in environmental engineering at the �鶹��Ѱ��, working under the leadership of Professor Fernando Rosario-Ortiz.

Diminishing Ice Coverage

“Seeing how little ice there was at the North Pole was very sad,” Buckley said. “When we got there we struggled to find an ice floe big enough to walk on. The climate projections in general are frightening and seeing it with your own eyes, it’s real.”

The trip was sponsored by the Norwegian Polar Institute and came about through a longstanding research collaboration Buckley has with Juliana D’Andrilli, a professor at the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium.

Buckley’s work includes analysis of organic matter in the Arctic. When organic matter is hit by sunlight it reacts to form carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide. As the ice sheets continue to melt, the sunlight will penetrate further into ocean releasing these greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

In addition, Buckley is studying the presence of persistent organic pollutants such as pharmaceuticals, pesticides, herbicides and flame-retardant chemicals. While the arctic has very few people, these pollutants are carried to the region on air and water currents from more populous areas thousands of miles away.

She was able to conduct some analysis on the ship, but much of the work required collecting samples to bring back home to a more controlled environment.

“When the ship is breaking ice, the boat lifts up over the ice and then comes down over and over. It’s hard to do chemistry,” she said.

24 Hours of Sun

Life on board was a continuous adventure with nearly every experience shared with her shipmates. And with the sun above the horizon all day and night, there was plenty of time to get to know the 28 researchers and 15 crewmembers aboard.

The Kronprins Haakon above the Arctic Circle.

“It’s 10 p.m. and still sunny and we’re wondering if we should we keep hanging out or go to bed,” Buckley said. “Every night we would play board games. I learned to knit. A researcher gave me needles and yarn and we would sit and talk and have coffee and tea.”

Although there was an abundance of high-tech scientific instruments, there was no internet access and while email was available, it was a single account shared by the entire crew.

“You’re with these people for five weeks 24 hours a day. I formed really strong relationships and friendships I hope last forever,” Buckley said. “It’s a little like summer camp in that way.”

Now back in the lab, Buckley is conducting organic matter photochemistry on the samples.

“I run optical measurements like absorbance and fluorescence to characterize the samples,” she said. “I use a solar simulator to hit the Arctic organic matter samples with artificial sunlight. You can measure the formation of reactive intermediates, which are generated by reactions between organic matter, the environment and light.”

The goal is to learn more about how sunlight interacts with the Arctic organic matter in the environment and how that affects climate change.

More Arctic Plans

Despite the risk of polar bear encounters, Buckley is eager to return to the tundra, and is planning an expedition to Alaska and Mt. Denali for this spring to analyze persistent organic pollutants in the high alpine.

“My Mom is excited but is concerned about my safety,” Buckley said. “She has asked why I can’t pick a field that doesn’t risk my life.”

After completing a trek to the North Pole, Buckley is also hopeful to make a similar trip to the opposite end of the Earth.

“It was never on my bucket list to visit the South Pole, but now that I’ve visited the North Pole, I want to go,” she said. “I am passionate about research and leading project, and I want to make a positive difference in the fields of environmental and climate science.”

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PhD candidate using satellites and machine learning to combat drought in Africa

Anonymous — Thu, 28 Jul 2022 16:18:34 +0000

PhD candidate using satellites and machine learning to combat drought in Africa Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 07/28/2022 - 10:18

Katie Fankhauser, a PhD candidate in environmental engineering, is the lead author of a paper in Science of The Total Environment that identifies impacts of high groundwater use in response to drought in the Horn of Africa through satellite data, remote-sensors and machine learning analysis tools.

We asked her about the research, her time at �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder and where the work goes from here.

Question: How did you get to �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder? What drew you to the university?
Answer: I previously worked in large-scale water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) and sustainable energy programs in East Africa with Associate Professor Thomas. My research towards a PhD in Environmental Engineering – and this project in particular – presented an opportunity to re-engage in this region of Africa with an approach toward improved water insecurity and livelihood resilience founded on data and evidence-based decision making.

Q: How would you describe this project and research?
A: Drought is one of the most persistent, expansive, and damaging of natural disasters. It is also increasing in prevalence and severity. And when coupled with weak policies and management, it can lead to regional water and food insecurity, disease, and conflict for billions of people globally.

Groundwater is an important resource of water for people, livestock, and agriculture during drought in the Horn of Africa. In this work, areas of high groundwater demand in drought-prone Kenya were identified, and the conditions forecasted prior to the dry season. For this project we used hydrologic and land surface conditions – derived from satellites and mechanistic models – combined with advanced statistics and machine learning to better describe a population’s reliance on groundwater during drought.

The maps we developed are very accurate and are now available for stakeholders including the Kenya National Drought Management Authority (NDMA) and the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET). These maps represent the first operational spatially-explicit sub-seasonal to seasonal estimates of groundwater use and demand in the literature.

Q: What are some of the applications of this work?
A: One of the primary reasons we want to research this dynamic is that knowledge of historical and forecasted groundwater use will improve decision-making and resource allocation for a range of early warning and early action applications.

The arid and semi-arid lands of Kenya have faced regular drought since at least 2016 with below average rainfall placing 18 million people at risk. The use of groundwater is an effective drought mitigation strategy and operational boreholes may reduce exposure and vulnerability to drought for affected populations. Yet, during the 2016-2017 drought, 55% of the pumps needed to access groundwater were non-functional in Kenya. The ability to direct limited resources to repair, maintain, or site the most critically needed boreholes based on projected use will enable responsible stewardship of water resources and community resilience to drought. Furthermore, observing and predicting trends in groundwater use could be an important indicator of a developing drought itself.

It is all part of the Drought Resilience Impact Platform (DRIP) – an integrated systems-based approach to reducing drought impacts and improving water quality and soil health that is being researched and explored on campus right now.

Q: Where will the research go from here?
A: At the beginning of July, near the start of the dry season in Kenya, we introduced the groundwater data products and service to stakeholders at several meetings and workshops. They have begun to integrate the information into their workflows and planning such as drought risk bulletins. Their feedback will inform iterative design of the models and data visualization.

With the dataset, we also plan to improve trend and anomaly detection of groundwater use and demand.

Q: What was is it like working with Associate Professor Evan Thomas and others in the Mortenson Center?
A: The Mortenson Center in Global Engineering is a diverse and welcoming group of people that have supported my research and personal growth while challenging me to think more critically about the impact of my work and the responsibility I have to promote anti-racism, decolonization of aid, localization and equity. This community has made my time at �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder meaningful and continues to motivate me to be a better researcher, professional and friend.

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Exploring assumptions in financing for urban water utilities in low-income countries

Anonymous — Fri, 12 Feb 2021 14:10:45 +0000

Exploring assumptions in financing for urban water utilities in low-income countries Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 02/12/2021 - 07:10

Anna Libey, a PhD student in environmental engineering at �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder, is the lead author on a new paper that compares utilities around the world and advocates for more subsidization in utility operations to provide clean water.

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Graduate Profile

Conducting PhD research at the bottom of the world

What first interested you in engineering?

Why did you decide to come to �鶹��Ѱ�����Boulder for grad school?

What do you love about �鶹��Ѱ�����Boulder?

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Expanding access to clean, safe, and sustainable drinking water

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Studying air quality to improve human health

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Two environmental engineering students earn major National Science Foundation fellowship

Find out about their research below:

Grace Berg

Kate Rodelli

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PhD student studying how urban wildfires impact the water supply

Three Minute Thesis

Fire Aftermath

Chemical Analysis

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Student designing greener buildings and a better future

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Grad student turning trash into cash

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Environmental engineering on an icebreaker ship at the North Pole

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PhD candidate using satellites and machine learning to combat drought in Africa

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Exploring assumptions in financing for urban water utilities in low-income countries

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Why did you decide to come to �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder for grad school?

What do you love about �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder?