Current Team


Jonathan L. Goodall, Ph.D., P.E., F.ASCE

Professor
email: goodall@virginia.edu
University webpage

Ph.D., Civil Engineering, University of Texas at Austin, 2005, Adviser David R. Maidment
MS, Civil Engineering, University of Texas at Austin, 2003
BS, Civil Engineering, University of Virginia, 2001

Jon Goodall is a professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and serves as the Director of the UVA Link Lab.

Sergio A. Barboda, Ph.D.

Postdoctoral Research Associate
email: rqt5kh@virginia.edu

Ph.D. Civil Engineering, Brigham Young University, 2023, Advisor Dr. Norm Jones
M.S. Water Resources Engineering, National University of Colombia, 2014
B.S. Agricultural Engineering, National University of Colombia, 2009

Sergio’s research is on groundwater resource assessment utilizing remote sensing data and groundwater modeling. He is currently researching hydraulic and hydrologic modeling of urban flooding.

Victor Ariel Leal Sobral

Ph.D. Candidate, Computer Engineering
email: vas4d@virginia.edu

M.S. Electronics and Applied Physics, ENSICAEN, France
B.S. Electronics and Applied Physics, ENSICAEN, France
B.S. Electrical Engineering, Universidade Federal da Bahia, Brazil

Victor is working on the design of self-powered IoT systems for industrial, water quality and flood monitoring applications. He is co-advised by Prof. Brad Campbell.

Natalie Lerma

Ph.D. Student, Civil Engineering
email: nrl5fh@virginia.edu

B.S. Ocean Engineering, Texas A&M University - Galveston
B.S. Offshore and Coastal Systems Engineering, Texas A&M University - Galveston
Minors in Mathematics and Maritime Administration, Texas A&M University - Galveston

Natalie is part of the Cyber-Physical Systems NRT program and her research is focusing on coastal urban flooding.

Ciara Horne

Ph.D. Student, Systems Engineering
email: ciarahorne@virginia.edu

B.S. Civil Engineering, University of Maryland

Ciara’s research consists of using data science and GIS to measure how the presence of dams and levees affect the flooding vulnerability of marginalized populations in the U.S. and thus contribute to public health and environmental injustices

Binata Roy

Ph.D. Student, Civil Engineering
email: br3xk@virginia.edu

M.Sc. in Water Resources Engineering, BUET, Bangladesh
B.Sc. in Water Resources Engineering, BUET, Bangladesh

Binata’s research interest comprises of hydrological processes in urban watershed and future consequences due to climate change. She plans to apply numerical models, RS & GIS tools, and statistical approaches for her study.

Yidi Wang

Ph.D. Student, Civil Engineering
email: yw5vq@virginia.edu

M.S. Environmental and Water Resources Engineering, The University of Texas at Austin, TX, USA, 2020
B.S. Watershed Science, Colorado State University, CO, USA, 2018
B.S. Geographic Sciences, East China Normal University, Shanghai, China, 2018

Yidi’ research is focused on building a real-time flood monitoring system and applying it to enhance flood forecasting in urban environments.

Savannah Lynn

Ph.D. Student, Civil Engineering
email: wnt6gp@virginia.edu

B.S. Chemical Engineering, Auburn University

Savannah is interested in coastal communities grappling with the impacts of climate change, including rising sea levels and heightened rainfall intensity. She explores the role of modeling and IoT in fortifying stormwater management systems, aiming to empower these communities to proactively address and adapt to future challenges.

Jiwoo Jeong, P.E.

Ph.D. Student, Civil Engineering
email: neq7xb@virginia.edu

M.S. Civil Engineering, Seoul National University, Republic of Korea
B.S. Civil Engineering, Seoul National University, Republic of Korea

Jiwoo is studying the impacts of climate change on urban coastal flooding.

Jiseon Song

Ph.D. Student, Civil Engineering
email: qkh6cy@virginia.edu

M.S. Civil Engineering, Chungnam National University, 2018
B.S. Civil Engineering, Chungnam National University, 2010

Jiseon is interested in developing an Artificial Intelligence model for real-time urban inundation forecasting.


Alumni


Jake Nelson, Ph.D.

Ph.D. Civil Engineering, University of Virginia
M.S. CEE, Brigham Young University
B.S. CEE, Brigham Young Univeristy

Jake was part of the Cyber-Physical Systems NRT program, and his dissertation evaluated stormwater quality and quantity compliance practices in Virginia, including the use of stormwater best management practices and environmental markets. He is now working as a stormwater engineer at Freese and Nichols.

Linnea Saby, Ph.D.

Ph.D. Civil Engineering, University of Virginia
M.E. Civil Engineering, University of Virginia
B.A. Environmental Studies, Guilford

Linnea’s PhD research was at the interface of water resources engineering, environmental science, data science, and policy. She was a School of Data Science Fellow and was co-advised with Prof. Larry Band. She will be a Knauss Fellow at NOAA.

Alex Chen, Ph.D.

Ph.D. Civil Engineering, University of Virginia
M.S. Bioenvironmental Systems Engineering, National Taiwan University, Taiwan
B.S. Hydraulic and Ocean Engineering, National Cheng Kung University, Taiwan

Alex researched smart stormwater management for coastal communities. His dissertation investigated the use of crowdsourcing, in particular Personal Weather Stations (PWS), for capturing rainfall during extreme weather events in Norfolk, VA. He now works for the National Weather Service in their flood forecasting center.

Iman Maghami, Ph.D.

Ph.D. Civil Engineering, University of Virginia
M.S. Civil Engineering, University of Tehran, Iran
B.S. Civil Engineering, Sharif University, Iran

Iman’s dissertation was on building cyberinfrastructure for the hydrology community, focusing on model sharing in HydroShare. He is now a postdoctoral scholar at BYU.

Faria Zahura, Ph.D.

Ph.D. Civil Engineering, University of Virginia
M.E. Civil Engineering, University of Virginia
B.S. Civil Engineering, Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET)

Faria’s dissertation applied data science approaches to better understanding transportation disruptions due to flooding. She is now a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Energy.

R. Chase Dong

M.S. Civil Engineering, University of Virginia
B.S. Biological Systems Engineering, Virginia Tech University

Chase’s research was on BMP maintenance and reviewing the database VDOT is building to better track BMP maintenance activities and costs.

Ben Bowes, Ph.D.

Ph.D Civil Engineering, University of Virginia
M.E. Civil Engineering, University of Virginia
B.S. Environmental Science, Virginia Wesleyan College

Ben studied urban water infrastructure, specifically coastal flooding, real-time flood warning, and smart stormwater management. He is now an engineer at Paradigm Environmental.

Youngdon Choi, Ph.D.

Ph.D Civil Engineering, University of Virginia
M.S. Civil Engineering, Pusan National University, Republic of Korea
B.S. Civil Engineering, Pusan National University, Republic of Korea

Choi’s research was on the HydroShare and Earth Cube projects advancing reproducible hydrologic modeling. He is now a manager at K-Water.

Ruchir Shah

B.S. Power Electronics Engineering, Gujarat Technological University, India

Ruchir was a member of Cyber-Physical Systems NRT program and did research on deploying environmental sensors for engineering robust real-time IoT-based flood warning system. He is now with EY.

Yawen Shen, Ph.D.

Ph.D. Civil Engineering, University of Virginia
M.S. Civil Engineering, Georgia Tech
B.S. Civil Engineering, Wuhan University, China

Yawen’s research was on resilient infrastructure systems, risk of flooding impacts to transportation infrastructure, and using 2D hydrodynamic models to simulate flooding in urban coastal environments. He is now a data scientist at One Concern.

Naomi Johnson

B.A., Computer Science, University of Virginia

Naomi researched using image segmentation in order to identify the areal extent and depth of flood waters. She now works at Microsoft.

Sean Allen

M.E., Civil Engineering with focus in Cyber-Physical Systems, University of Virginia
B.S., Civil Engineering, University of Virginia

Sean explored the Things Network as a way to connect smart devices for stormwater monitoring. He now an engineer with Hazen and Sawyer.

Gina O’Neil, Ph.D.

Ph.D Civil Engineering, University of Virginia
M.S. Civil Engineering, University of Virginia
B.S. Civil Engineering, University of Virginia

Gina completed her PhD on data science and machine learning approaches for wetland delineation using LiDAR. She now works for ESRI in Denver, CO.

Jeff Sadler, Ph.D.

Ph.D. Civil Engineering, University of Virginia
M.S. Civil Engineering, Brigham Young University
B.S. Civil Engineering, Brigham Young University

Jeff completed his PhD in the use of cyber-physical system approaches for smart stormwater management to mitigate flooding impacts. He is now an Assistant Professor at Oklahoma State University after completing a postdoc with the USGS in Middleton, WI as part of the USGS Office of Water Information (OWI) Data Science team through a Mendenhall Research Fellowship.

Imaan Hameed

B.S. Systems Engineering, University of Virginia

Imaan designed an inexpensive, IoT rain measurement and data communication system. He is now a software engineer at Lockheed Martin.

Danny Voce

B.S. Computer Science, University of Virginia

Danny helped to build software for water and environmental management applications. He is now a Python Developer at Palo Alto Networks.

Mohamed Morsy, Ph.D.

Ph.D., Civil Engineering, University of Virginia
M.S. Civil Engineering, Cairo University, Egypt
B.S. Civil Engineering, Cairo University, Egypt

Mohamed completed his PhD at UVA working on the HydroShare project, researching ways to represent hydrologic models within a resource-based hydrologic information system, and designing a flood warning system for VDOT. He is now a professor at Cairo University and senior engineer at Dar.

Bakinam Essawy, Ph.D.

Ph.D., Civil Engineering, University of Virginia
M.S. Civil Engineering, Cairo University, Egypt
B.S. Civil Engineering, Cairo University, Egypt

Bakinam completed her PhD at UVA on modeling regional-scale hydrologic systems to understand water availability and drought. Her work is part of the DataNet Federation Consortium (DFC) project using iRODS to create workflows for hydrologic modeling. After serving as a postdoc at UVA, she joined Dewberry in 2019 as part of their resilience group.

Meredith Sutton

B.S., Civil Engineering, University of Virginia

Meredith researched the use of Python notebooks and HPC for hydrologic modeling. She also assisted in creating our group and project webpages. She is now a PhD student at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and an NSF GRFP awardee.

Edward Morgan

B.S., Computer Engineering, University of Virginia

Edward designed inexpensive, durable rainfall measurement devices for flood detection. He is now a software developer at Commonwealth Computer Research, Inc.

Mary-Michael Robertson

B.S., Civil Engineering, University of Virginia

Mary-Michael researched remote sensing and GIS-based methods for wetland screening. She is now a graduate student in urban and environmental planning at UVA.

Rodney Hawkings

B.S., Engineering, Saint Augustine’s University, Raleigh, NC

Rodney was a summer research exploring environmental justice issues related to sea level rise and flooding in coastal communities.

Stuart Sheffield

M.S, Civil Engineering, University of Virginia, 2016

Stuart completed his thesis on creating distributed environmental decision support systems. He is now an engineer with Bohler Engineering.

Mehmet Ercan, Ph.D.

Ph.D., Civil Engineering, University of South Carolina-Columbia, 2015

Mehmet was an engineer with ARCADIS after completing his Ph.D. degree. He is now an Assistant Professor at Inonu University in Turkey and a consultant for EmNet.

Ben Felton

M.S., Civil Engineering, University of Virginia, 2015

Ben completed his MS thesis on GIS and remote sensing approaches for wetland screening. He is now an engineer with A. Morton Thomas and Associates.

Alicia Nobles, Ph.D.

M.S., Civil Engineering, University of Virginia, 2014
B.S., Civil Engineering, Georgia Tech

Alicia completed her M.S. thesis in civil engineering and then a Ph.D. in Systems and Information Engineering at the University of Virginia with Prof Barnes. She is now a an Assistant Professor at UC-San Diego.

Md. Jahangir Alam, Ph.D.

Ph.D., Civil Engineering, University of South Carolina-Columbia, 2013
B.S., Civil Engineering, Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET)

Alam was an engineer with Arcadis after completing his PhD degree and is now an engineer with Hazen and Sawyer.

Phillis Mbewe

M.E., Civil Engineering, University of South Carolina-Columbia, 2013
B.S., Civil Engineering, Duke University

Phillis is an engineer with LJA Engineering, Inc.

Mirza Billah, Ph.D.

Ph.D., Civil Engineering, University of South Carolina-Columbia, 2013
B.S., Civil Engineering, Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET)

Mirza completed a postdoc at Virginia Tech and is now a hydrologist with the South Florida Water Management District.

Mostafa Elag, Ph.D.

Ph.D., Civil Engineering, University of South Carolina-Columbia, 2013
M.S., Civil Engineering, Cairo University, Egypt
B.S., Civil Engineering, Cairo University, Egypt

Mostafa completed a postdoc at UIUC and is now an engineer at Arcadis.

Tony Castronova, Ph.D.

B.S., Civil Engineering, Clarkson University

Tony was a Research Assistant Professor at Utah State University and is now a hydrologist at CUAHSI.