Aerial view of beach and water

Environmental Faculty Research Groups

Environmental and Water Resource Systems

  • Decision Analytics for Complex Systems (The Reed Research Group)
    Dr. Reed’s primary research interests relate to sustainable water management given conflicting demands from renewable energy systems, ecosystem services, expanding populations, and climate change.
     
  • Stedinger Group
    Dr. Stedinger's research has focused on statistical issues in hydrology and optimal operation of water resource systems.

Environmental Fluid Mechanics and Hydrology

  • Albertson Group
    Albertson's work is generally directed toward the development of a comprehensive understanding of the exchange rates of mass (e.g. water and CO2), energy, and momentum between the land and atmosphere. 
     
  • Cowen Group
    Cowen's research interests are in environmental fluid mechanics and energy harvesting. He has built an environmental fluid mechanics research program centered on five themes: environmental transport processes, water wave induced flows, lake hydrodynamics (physical limnology), energy harvesting, and quantitative imaging techniques.
     
  • Environmental C.F.D. Group (Diamessis)
    The Environmental Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) Group’s primary objective is to investigate, using numerical simulations, the physics of the interplay between turbulence and internal gravity waves in both mid-water and near the bottom/top and lateral boundaries of the ocean and lakes. 
     
  • Qi Li Research Group
    Dr. Li is interested in flows and transport in the lower atmosphere as well as the general topic of human-scale impact on the natural environment under an evolving climate.

Environmental Processes 

  • Ecological Engineering Research Lab (Reid) 
    The Ecological Engineering Laboratory is focused on harnessing natural processes in the landscape to eliminate contaminants from water and soil, and ensure the quality of these resources for societal needs and ecosystem health.
     
  • Gu Group
    The Gu Group's research topics focus on the role of microbial processes in phosphorus cycling, enhanced biological phosphorus removal technologies, advanced technologies for nutrient removal and recovery and next-generation biosensors for water quality monitoring. 
     
  • Helbling Research Group
    The Helbling Research Group's research focuses on the relationship between human social and technological development and the quality of freshwater resources. They are particularly interested in the occurrence and fate of organic chemicals in natural and engineered water systems. 
     
  • Richardson Lab in Applied Microbiology
    The Richardson group studies microbial communities of relevance to important environmental engineering problems. Application areas include bioremediation, bioenergy, sustainable wastewater treatment, nutrient and greenhouse gas cycling, and pathogen detection.