Research Overview

My research program addresses the grand challenge of water resources for society through two complementary approaches. First, I am a lead developer of advanced methods of mathematical analysis for engineering problems using the Analytic Element Method.  The AEM has emerged over 25 years of groundwater studies, and enables nearly exact solutions to study the interactions of closely placed objects, e.g., the impacts of interacting fractures that preferentially attract water through groundwater regions. My consulting work began during PhD studies by writing computer software for NAGROM, The National Groundwater Model of The Netherlands, with ongoing collaborations providing international project funding. A second research area is interdisciplinary water resources studies, where we’ve developed GIS methods to support interdisciplinary advances, and computational models to integrate methods (adoption of EU Water Framework Directive OpenMI protocol). These endeavors have been funded by over $18 million in research grants as lead or co-PI from funding agencies such as NSF, USDA, US EPA, UTC, and many other local and international agencies and consulting firms.  Discovery of the critical factors that control water resources systems have been identified through these collective endeavors; results have been disseminated in the best journals; and I actively promote our program through conferences, invited talks, and meetings with a wide range of water stakeholders.