Ashley Cao is a 4th year PhD candidate in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. Originally from Corona, California, Ashley received her BSE in Civil and Environmental Engineering from Princeton University in 2023. Ashley is currently studying the effects of dew deposition on vegetation at the ecosystem-scale using ecosys mathematical modeling.

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Katie Stephens is a 4th year PhD candidate in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. She holds a B.Sc. in Biological Systems Engineering from UC Davis (2020) and an M.Sc. in Material Sciences and Engineering from UC Merced (2023). She is currently working on using GNSS-R data from Spire to map the spatio-temporal variations of wetland extent in boreal ecosystems and the impact of these on methane emissions. Katie received a NASA FINESST graduate fellowship in summer 2024.

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Anna Valcarcel is a 4th year PhD student in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. She attended UC Davis, earning her BSc in Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering in 2021. She has had several research and extracurricular experiences working with small-format satellites and is now applying her knowledge to earth observation for environmental hydrology. Anna received an NSF GRFP Fellowship in Spring 2024 and is currently working on modeling the outflow of ungauged basins in the tropics using CYGNSS surface water maps and machine learning, as well as mapping salinity and freshwater plumes in oceans from PACE.

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Zeyin Li is a 3rd year Ph.D. student in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. He earned his B.Sc. in Environmental Science from Hohai University in 2024. Zeyin has been collaborating with Paul and Ashley in the lab and is now beginning his independent research. His current work focuses on plant-water interactions and urban thermology, utilizing the Solweig model to investigate how variations in vegetation cover and building distribution jointly affect the urban heat island effect.

Samantha (Sami) Smith is a 2nd-year Ph.D. student in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. Sami received her B.Sc. in Biochemistry from the University of Maryland in 2022 before working as a Scientist Program Analyst at NASA for three years. Sami received an NSF GRFP Fellowship in Spring 2026.

Eric (Ricky) Wood is a 1st-year Ph.D. student in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. He received his B.Sc. in Environmental Engineering from CU Boulder in 2024 before spending two years as an engineer for Hazen and Sawyer. Ricky is interested in studying how wildfires affect surface water quality and harmful algal blooms. 

Liv is a junior in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences. In the Water & Carbon Lab, Liv has been working on a global fog mapping project since Spring 2025, along with PhD student Paul Seibert.

Cooper is a junior in the Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering. Cooper has been helping us with a variety of projects, from leading a review on foliar water uptake to assisting with work in the greenhouse.