Cynthia Gerlein-Safdi, PI

I am an ecohydrologist interested in understanding water-carbon relations within the soil-plant-atmosphere continuum. I use an array of methods, from satellite data to process-based modeling, from stable isotopes lab experiments to field measurements.

I graduated with my PhD from the department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Princeton University in 2017 and was a junior fellow from the Michigan Society of Fellows from 2017 to 2020, working in the department of Climate and Space Sciences and Engineering. I started as a Project Scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in October 2020 in the Climate & Ecosystem Sciences Division, splitting my time between the Watershed Function SFA and the Terrestrial Ecosystem Science SFA team. In January 2022, I started as an Assistant Professor in the department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at UC Berkeley. I remain affiliated with LBNL as a Faculty Scientist.

In this new setting, I am continuing my work linking the water and carbon cycles in vegetation, understanding the effects of dew, fog, and rain interception on plant function and water resources, and combining stable isotopes, remote sensing, and process-based modeling to get an understanding of how these processes hold across spatial and temporal scales. I am excited to push the development of new remote-sensing products and apply them to address unsolved problems in ecohydrology.