Research Statement

My research centers on two interconnected themes: soil erosion modeling and watershed hydrology under climate change, with a growing focus on integrating data-driven and process-based approaches to support climate-resilient land and water management.

In early work, I developed a GIS-integrated Cellular Automata (CA) model to simulate rill erosion under varying rainfall and slope conditions, funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China. I later conducted watershed-scale erosion risk assessments in the Poyang Lake Basin using USLE, remote sensing, and spatial analysis, contributing to improved risk mapping in a key ecological region.

My climate-related hydrology research explored 50-year trends in runoff, sediment yield, and rainfall variability using wavelet analysis, geostatistics, and downscaled data, supported by national and postdoctoral foundations.

At the U.S. EPA’s Robert S. Kerr Environmental Research Center, I co-authored a major technical report reviewing 14 watershed models for nutrient fate and transport and published a peer-reviewed synthesis on NPS pollution modeling. I also applied SWAT to evaluate sediment loading in China’s Xinjiang River Basin under data-scarce conditions.

From 2020–2021, I advanced climate impact modeling at USDA-ARS by applying WEPP to simulate runoff, erosion, and yield under conservation practices and projected storm intensification. I built a Python-based automation tool to batch-process WEPP simulations across climate scenarios, supporting peer-reviewed publications in Catena and Soil & Tillage Research.

Since 2021, I have served as a Federal Postdoctoral Research Associate (GS-12) with the U.S. EPA Office of Research and Development in North Carolina. I lead high-performance SWMM modeling of contaminant transport (e.g., anthrax spores) for the Homeland Security Research Program, contributing to interagency resilience planning (AnCOR) with EPA, DHS, and USCG. I incorporate IronPython scripting, GIS workflows, and Parsivel2 disdrometer data to study urban runoff behavior and precipitation microphysics.

My long-term goal is to integrate data science, hydrologic modeling, and climate adaptation strategies to support resilient watershed planning. With broad experience across modeling platforms (SWAT, WEPP, SWMM), field data integration, HPC environments, and interdisciplinary collaboration, I am well positioned to lead research at the intersection of environmental change and water resource management.