Charisma Acey
Associate Professor and Faculty Director of the Berkeley Food Institute
Department of City and Regional Planning
Research Areas: access to drinking water and sanitation, environmental justice, poverty reduction, food security, collaborative governance and participatory research methods
Sample Projects: Exploring the Human Right to Water Paradigm in Urban and Peri-Urban Governance; Are Water Utility Customers in Kenya Willing to Pay More to Improve Sanitation in Low-Income Communities?; Infrastructure Imaginaries: Informal Urbanism, Creativity and Ecology in Lagos, Nigeria
Lisa Alvarez-Cohen
Fred and Claire Sauer Professor of Environmental Engineering
Environmental Engineering
Research Areas: Environmental microbiology and ecology, biotransformation and fate of environmental and wastewater contaminants, and innovative molecular and isotopic techniques for studying microbial ecology of communities involved in wastewater treatment and bioremediation communities.
Sample Projects: Oxygenase-Catalyzed Biodegradation of Emerging Water Contaminants: 1,4-Dioxane and N-Nitrosodimethylamine; Quantifying Gene Expression to Predict and Optimize Reductive Dechlorination by Dehalococcoides spp.; Application of Microarrays to Identify Biomarkers of Reductive Dehalogenating-Microbial Communities; Using Molecular and Isotopic Tools to Characterize the Biodegradation of Chlorinated Ethenes and Ethanes; and Characterizing the fate and biotransformation of fluorochemicals in aqueous film forming forms (AFFF).
Maximilian Auffhammer
George Pardee Jr. Professor of International Sustainable Development & Regional Associate Dean Letters & Science
Department of Agricultural & Resource Economics
Research Areas: Forecasting Greenhouse Gas Emissions, impacts of air pollution on agriculture, Microeconomic Theory, Economics of Climate Change, and econometrics
Sample Projects: Adverse Reproductive Outcomes in a Population Exposed to Perfluorinated Compounds in Drinking Water (with Martha Rogers, Gina Waterfield, Philippe Grandjean, and David Sunding, 2018); Turning water into jobs: The impact of surface water deliveries on farm employment and fallowing in California’s San Joaquin Valley (with Dina Gorensteyn and David Sunding, 2018); Forecasting Urban Water Consumption in California: Rethinking Model Evaluation (with Steven Buck, Hilary Soldati, and David Sunding, 2018).
Dennis D. Baldocchi
Professor
Environmental Science, Policy and Management
Research Areas: Biometeorology, biosphere-atmosphere trace gas fluxes
Sample Projects: Coordinated use of experimental measurements and theoretical models to understand the physical, biological, and chemical processes that control trace gas fluxes between the biosphere and atmosphere and to quantify their temporal and spatial variations. The spatial scales of this work ranges from the dimension of a leaf through the depth of plant canopies and the planetary boundary layer and the horizontal extent of landscapes.
Ellen Bruno
Assistant Specialist in Cooperative Extension
Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics
Research Areas: Economics of water resources–water markets and adoption of water-saving technologies, agricultural and environmental economics.
Sample Projects: Water Prices, Water Use, and Adoption of Agricultural Technology: Empirical Evidence from California Groundwater with Katrina Jessoe at UC Davis and Economics of Groundwater Quality in Agriculture with Molly Van Dop and Michael Hanemann at UC Berkeley.
Stephanie Carlson
Associate Professor
Environmental Science, Policy and Management
Research Areas: Freshwater fish ecology, evolutionary ecology, conservation of freshwaters
Sample Projects: Evolution (and loss) of biodiversity among salmon populations, Ecology of intermittent streams, Ecology and conservation planning of urban streams, Bio-physical coupling in coastal estuaries, Ecological impacts of large-scale water management.
Jack Colford
Professor of Epidemiology
School of Public Health
Research Areas: Waterborne infectious diseases (domestic, developing country, and recreational water settings), Clinical trial design (individual and community-level)
Sample Projects: Cluster-randomised controlled trials of individual and combined water, sanitation, hygiene and nutritional interventions in rural Bangladesh and Kenya: the WASH Benefits study, Health risks associated with ocean exposure and fecal indicator bacteria following rainstorms: a longitudinal cohort study of surfers in San Diego, California, Spillover Effects of Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene Interventions on Child Health
Holly Doremus
James H. House and Hiram H. Hurd Professor of Environmental Regulation;
Associate Dean, Faculty Development and Research; Co-Director, Center for Law, Energy & the Environment
Berkeley Law
Research Areas: Environmental law, natural resources law, and law and science
Sample Projects: Hydropower relicensing in California
Iryna Dronova
Assistant Professor
Department of Landscape Architecture & Environmental Planning
Research Areas: Wetlands; Wetland Restoration; Remote Sensing; GIS & Spatial Analysis
Sample Projects: Using remotely-sensed phenology to monitor biodiversity and ecosystem services in wetlands; Cost-effective tools for wetland restoration monitoring from local to regional scales
Ashok Gadgil
Professor
ENV Program, Civil and Environmental Engineering
Research Areas: Drinking Water Treatment; Technology Innovation; Technology Maturation for Impact
Sample projects: Arsenic remediation of groundwater used for drinking; Advanced technologies for Capacitive Deionization; Low cost effective remediation of excess fluoride from groundwater used for drinking
Manuela Girotto
Assistant Professor
Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management
Research areas: Hydrologic data assimilation and remote sensing
Sample projects: Hydrologic response and interaction between natural and human driven processes, land surface remote sensing and multi-sensor, -spectrum, -resolution data assimilation; hydrology contribution to sea level change, snow hydrology.
Steven Glaser
Professor and Faculty Director of the CITRIS Intelligent Water Infrastructures and Adaptive Cities Initiative
Civil and Environmental Engineering
Research Areas: Laboratory earthquakes and nanoseismology, wireless sensors networks, snow water hydrology, internet of water, geophysics and wave propagation, geothermal energy, rock mechanics
Sample Projects: Operates the largest wireless network in the world, monitoring forest hydrology of snowmelt and water balance in the Sierra Nevada. The wireless sensor networks research covers a wide range of applications – from the first use of the Berkeley Mote to monitor the seismic safety of wood-frame houses to measuring the seismic response of the Masada mountain in Israel to measuring environmental hazards at Chinese historical sites such as Dunhuang.
Ted Grantham
Assistant Cooperative Extension Specialist and Adjunct Assistant Professor; Co-Director of the Cannabis Research Center at UC Berkeley
Environmental Science, Policy, and Management
Research Areas: freshwater ecology; surface water hydrology; water resources management
Sample projects: Eco-hydrology of intermittent streams; managing water for the environment; freshwater ecosystem vulnerability to climate change; environmental impacts of cannabis production
Slav Hermanowicz
Professor of the Graduate School
Environmental Engineering
Research Areas: Biological water and wastewater treatment processes; biofilms and their development; analysis of full-scale treatment reactors; nutrient control; sustainable development
Sample Projects: Deammonification of anaerobic sludge digestate; Better drinking water quality in storage; Solar optics-based active pasteurization for greywater reuse and integrated thermal building control; Physics of foaming in anaerobic digesters; Sustainable development: physical and moral issues; New sources of water; Toward a definition of sustainability.
Kristina Hill
Associate Professor
Landscape Architecture & Environmental Planning and Urban Design
Research Areas: Urban ecology and hydrology in relationship to physical design and social justice issues, adapting urban districts and shore zones to the new challenges associated with climate change, adaptation and coastal design
Sample Projects: Urban water system design that supports salmon health, understanding the potential for designs to help protect coastal communities as sea levels rise internationally, adaptation and coastal design in the San Francisco Bay Area
Arpad Horvath
Professor
Energy, Civil Infrastructure and Climate Engineering and Project Management
Research Areas: Life-cycle environmental and economic assessment of products, processes, and services, particularly answering important questions about civil infrastructure systems and the built environment: transportation systems, water and wastewater systems, biofuels, pavements, buildings, and construction materials.
Sample Projects: Environmental implications of various products, processes and services, in particular, transportation systems, water and wastewater systems, biofuels, pavements, buildings, and construction materials.
Andrew D. Jones
Deputy Director, Climate Readiness Institute; Program Domain Lead, Earth Systems and Society Program
Climate and Ecosystem Sciences Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Lab
Research Areas: Hydrology and climate change; quantitative Earth system science; decision-relevant metrics for climate models; stakeholder engagement
Sample Projects: Project Hyperion; Water-Energy Resilience Research Institute
Michael Kiparsky
Director of the Wheeler Water Institute
Center for Law, Energy & the Environment, UC Berkeley School of Law
Research Areas: Water resources policy and management; science-policy interface; translational research and synthesis
Sample Projects: Evaluating and Improving the Relationships Between Regulation and Innovation in the Wastewater Sector; Developing Water Data Systems to Improve Decision Making; Recharge Net Metering to Enhance Groundwater Sustainability; Addressing Institutional Vulnerabilities in California’s Water Allocation Institutions; Evaluating the Benefits for and Pathways to Small Water System Consolidations
G. Mathias Kondolf
Professor
Environmental Planning
Research Areas: fluvial geomorphology, hydrology, river restoration, environmental planning, environmental science, managing flood-prone lands, urban rivers, and sediment in rivers and reservoirs
Sample Projects: The social connectivity of urban rivers, analyzing the city-river relationships over time and current urban river revitalization efforts; The social life of the sediment balance, examining river-basin impacts of dams on downstream rivers and deltas from both geomorphological and environmental history perspectives; and Strategic dam planning for improved tradeoffs between hydropower generation and environment.
Michael Mascarenhas
Associate Professor
Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management
Research Areas: water access and environmental justice; water charity and affordability; Indigenous water rights, human right to water.
Sample Projects: Thirsty for Environmental Justice. Flint, Detroit, and the War over Michigan’s Water. Previous Projects: Where the Waters Divide. Neoliberalism, White Privilege, and Environmental Racism in Canada (Lexington Books, 2015), and New Humanitarianism and the Crisis of Charity: Good Intentions on the Road to Help (Indiana University Press, 2017)
Baoxia Mi
Assistant Professor
Environmental Engineering and Energy, Civil Infrastructure and Climate (ECIC)
Research Areas: Advanced water treatment technology, membrane process, water and wastewater reuse, desalination, environmental nanotechnology, interfacial and transport phenomena
Sample Projects: Graphene-based membranes for water purification; Hybrid membrane systems for enhanced water and energy sustainability; Fundamental understanding of fouling and transport mechanisms in membrane processes
Kara Nelson
Professor
Environmental Engineering
Research Areas: Detection, removal, and inactivation of pathogens in water and sludge; Water reuse; Natural treatment systems; Drinking water and sanitation in developing countries.
Sample Projects: Disinfection of Water by Sunlight; Evaluation of 24×7 versus Intermittent Water Supply in Hubli-Dharwad, India; Tertiary Treatment for Water Reuse; Wastewater Irrigation of Food Crops; and Stormwater Treatment by Bioinfiltration.
Amy Pickering
Assistant Professor
Civil and Environmental Engineering & The Blum Center for Developing Economies
Research areas: Water, sanitation, global health
Sample projects: Strategies for scaling up passive chlorination to increase global access to safe water; effects of drinking water chlorination on children’s intestinal flora and resistomes in Dhaka, Bangladesh
Alison E. Post
Associate Professor
Political Science and Global Metropolitan Studies
Research areas: Institutions for urban water delivery; politics of water management and distribution, especially in the Global South; private sector participation in water delivery; water intermittency; human right to water.
Sample Projects: Foreign and Domestic Investment in Argentina: The Politics of Privatized Infrastructure; How Investor Portfolios Shape Regulatory Outcomes: Privatized Infrastructure After Crises; Information and Intermittent Water: An Impact Evaluation in Bangalore, India; Does Codifying the Human Right to Water Change Public Opinion?
Isha Ray
Professor, Energy and Resources Group
Affiliate Faculty, Geography, Institute for South Asia Studies
Research Areas: Water and development; technology and development; common property resources; and social science research methods
Sample Projects: Access to water and sanitation for the rural and urban poor, the role of technology in improving livelihoods, and public perceptions of energy and climate change policies.
Justin V. Remais
Professor
Environmental Health Sciences, School of Public Health
Research Areas: infectious disease dynamics in changing environments; environmental and social forcing of vector-borne and waterborne infections; urban epidemiology of environmental pathogens; epidemiology of global environmental change
Sample Projects: Analytical methods for estimating the joint climatological-social drivers of water quality and supply in contrasting tropical zones in Ecuador and China (NSF Water, Sustainability and Climate funded); Public health impacts of drought and climate change in California (UCOP MRPI funded); West Nile Virus, cocci and California’s water resources: exploring relationships between transmission, climate, and hydrology (UCOP MRPI funded); and Effects of agricultural expansion and intensification on the ecology and epidemiology of the waterborne parasite that causes schistosomiasis (NIH EEID funded)
Vincent Resh
Professor of the Graduate School
Department of Environmental Science, Policy, & Management
Research Areas: Aquatic Biology, Water Pollution, Modeling, Entomology
Sample projects: Berkeley Water Center Berkeley/China-CDC Program for Water & Health Advisory Board; developing approaches that can be used for biological monitoring and assessment of water quality in developing countries and by volunteer monitoring groups; studies of the evolutionary biology and ecology of aquatic insects, crustaceans, and mollusks in the stream and river habitats; the evaluation of habitat manipulations for use in environmental restoration or enhancement, control of water-borne disease vectors of humans, and the use of manipulations in examining underlying influences of ecological interactions; and the development of techniques for the biological assessment of water quality.
Albert Ruhi
Assistant Professor
Department of Environmental Science, Policy, & Management
Research Areas: Freshwater Ecology
Sample Projects: 2019-23 Collaborative Proposal: NSF MSB-FRA: Scaling Climate, Connectivity, and Communities in Streams; 2019-20 California Institute for Water Resources (CIWR) Water Research Program. Towards a Mechanistic Understanding of the Multi-Scale Effects of Drought on Riverine Biodiversity; 2019-20 California Department of Fish and Wildlife Awards. Reconnecting Delta food webs: evaluating the influence of tidal marsh restoration on energy flow and prey availability for native fishes; 2019-20 Subaward from the National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center, University of Maryland. Advancing quantitative methods to understand causal pathways and feedbacks within complex socio-hydrological systems.
David Sedlak
Co-Director of Berkeley Water Center, Malozemoff Professor in Mineral Engineering, Director of Institute for Environmental Science and Engineering (IESE)
Environmental Engineering
Research Areas: Environmental chemistry, water recycling, contaminant fate in receiving waters, natural treatment systems, reinvention of urban water systems
Sample Projects: The Fate of Trace Organic Compounds in Treatment Wetlands, In Situ Chemical Oxidation of Persistent Organic Contaminants
Anna Serra-Llobet
Researcher
Institute of International Studies
Research Areas: Comparative studies between the US and the EU on Flood Risk Management Policies
Sample Projects: Titles of water-related projects you are working on: Sustainable Floodplains Project. This project explores sustainable flood management strategies in the US and the EU with the goal of finding tools that can help to improve flood risk management in different countries. As an example, our book “Managing Flood Risk: Innovative Approaches from Big Floodplain Rivers and Urban Streams” presents voices of those on the front lines of implementing a new paradigm in flood risk management, each river with a unique set of challenges and opportunities derived from its geography as well as differences in governance between America and European contexts.
David Zilberman
Professor and Robinson Chair
Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics
Research Areas: Water Economics – water conservation, water market, water quality; Technological Change, Adoption of new technology and innovation; The Bioeconomy – biotechnology and biofuels; Agricultural, environmental and nutritional policy, risk management; and Environmental sustainability – Climate change, environmental risk
Sample Projects: Adoption of Drip Irrigation in California: A historical/econometric study on the evolution of the adoption of drip irrigation in California with Rebecca Taylor, Douglas Parker and Ariel Dinar; The relationship between water dams and conservation: Understanding to what extend dams and conservation are substitutes or complements (will better conservation technologies reduce or increase the need for dams?), with applications to climate change. With Yang Xie; How California is responding to the drought: A new Giannini Foundation project with Yang Xie and Douglas Parker; The Economic Impact of CIMIS (California Irrigation Management Information System): Supported by DWR and NASA with Douglas Parker; and The Regulation of Animal Waste: Assessing the challenge of regulating Nitrogen and Phosphorus simultaneously with Antti Iho and Douglas Parker.