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Faculty: Department

Civil & Environmental Engineering (CEE)
Roger Bales

Roger Bales

Professor

rbales@ucmerced.edu

Lab Site

SRE 415

  • Ecosystem climate solutions
  • Water resources
  • Hydrology

Marc Beutel

Professor and Department Chair (CEE)

mbeutel@ucmerced.edu

SRE 443

  • Surface Water Quality
  • Lake and Reservoir Management
  • Mercury Cycling in Aquatic Ecosystems
  • Natural Treatment Systems
Martha Conklin

Martha Conklin

Professor Emeritus

mconklin@ucmerced.edu

Lab Site

  • Surface water/groundwater interactions
  • Watershed hydrology
  • Forest management/water interactions
  • Natural tracers for water movement
  • Stakeholder engagement
  • K-12 environmental education

Visar Farhangi

Assistant Teaching Professor

visarfarhangi@ucmerced.edu

SRE 411

  • Design optimization of deep foundations
  • Anomalies in drilled shafts
  • Soil-structure interaction
  • AI-based optimized models for sustainable and improved concrete
  • Effects of extreme environmental and load conditions on concrete structures
Abbas Ghassemi

Abbas Ghassemi

Teaching Professor and Executive Committee Chair

aghassemi2@ucmerced.edu

SE2 372

  • Risk-based decision-making
  • Renewable energy (solar, wind and geothermal)
  • Bio-based fuels and water desalination
  • Carbon management and sequestration
  • Energy efficiency 
  • Pollution prevention, multiphase flow and process control

Rakesh Goel

Professor and Dean

SE2 315

  • Seismic safety of marine structures 
  • Seismic analysis of bridges in fault-rupture zones 
  • Use of supplemental damping to improve seismic behavior of structures 
  • Performance-based seismic engineering of buildings 
  • Earthquake analysis and design of plan-wise asymmetric buildings and bridges 
  • Base isolation and energy dissipation devices 
  • Experimental methods in structural dynamics 
  • Studies on nonlinear behavior of structures 
Thomas C. Harmon

Thomas Harmon

Professor and Director of Sierra Nevada Research Institute (SNRI)

tharmon@ucmerced.edu

Lab Site

SRE 435

  • Contaminant transport in aquatic systems
  • Soil and groundwater remediation
  • Development and use of environmental sensors
Hestir-Erin

Erin Hestir

Associate Professor

ehestir@ucmerced.edu

SRE 219

  • Water and food security/biodiversity/ecosystem services
  • Geospatial analytics
  • Hyperspectral and satellite remote sensing
  • Sensor networks in inland and coastal waters and wetlands
Safeeq Khan

Safeeq Khan

Associate Professor

msafeeq@ucmerced.edu

Lab Site

SRE 423

  • Disturbance & Global Change Hydrology
  • Integrated Modeling
  • Nature-Based Climate Solutions (NbS)
  • Remote Sensing
  • Climate Change

Sam Markolf

Assistant Professor

smarkolf@ucmerced.edu

SRE 211

  • Sustainability and Resilience of Urban and Infrastructure Systems
  • Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation
  • Interconnected Social-Ecological-Technological Systems (SETS)
  • Systems Thinking and Risk Analysis under Uncertainty
Mark Matsumoto

Mark Matsumoto

Professor Emeritus and Past School of Engineering Dean

mmatsumoto@ucmerced.edu

  • Water and wastewater treatment, especially land-based treatment systems
  • Hazardous waste site remediation

Josué Medellín-Azuara

Professor

jmedellin@ucmerced.edu

Lab Site

SRE 229

  • Large scale hydro-economic modeling for water management and policy analysis
  • Water management for agricultural, environmental and urban uses
  • Agricultural production adaptation to drought and climate change
  • Sustainable agroecosystems for water and food security
  • Water informatics, consumptive water use in agriculture using remote sensing
  • Impact analysis using partial and general equilibrium models
Colleen Naughton

Colleen Naughton

Assistant Professor

cnaughton2@ucmerced.edu

SRE 215

  • Food-Energy-Water Systems (FEWS)
  • Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment (LCSA)
  • Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WASH) in developing communities
  • Geographic Information Systems (GIS)
  • Integration of Anthropology and Engineering
  • Science Policy

Tapan Pathak

Associate Professor of Cooperative Extension

tpathak@ucmerced.edu

SRE 429

  • Applied climate in agriculture
Thomas W. Peterson

Thomas Peterson

Professor Emeritus

twpeterson@ucmerced.edu

  • Atmospheric aerosols
Robert Rice

Robert Rice

Associate Teaching Professor

SE2 375

  • Snow science
  • Mountain hydrology
  • Water resources
  • Sensor networks
  • Remote sensing
  • Climate change
Samuel J. Traina

Samuel Traina

Professor Emeritus

straina@ucmerced.edu

Lab Site

  • Chemical transformations of pollutants in soils, surface and ground water
Joshua Viers

Joshua Viers

Professor

jviers@ucmerced.edu

SRE 225

  • Agroecology and Conservation Agriculture Planning and Implementation
  • Climatic and Hydrological Change Vulnerability Assessment and Adaptation Strategies
  • Ecosystem Service and Biodiversity Inventory, Assessment, and Restoration
  • Geospatial Technologies (Geographic Information Systems / Remote Sensing);
  • Informatics; Database Design and Data Mining
  • Water and Watershed Management; Water Footprinting
Roland Winston

Roland Winston

Distinguished Professor Emeritus

rwinston@ucmerced.edu

  • Solar power and renewable energy
  • Elementary particle physics
  • Non-imaging optics
Siddaiah Yarra

Siddaiah Yarra

Assistant Teaching Professor

syarra@ucmerced.edu

SE2 382

  • Pedagogic research
  • Forensic engineering education and dissemination
  • Recruitment, Retention and graduation of first generation and economically disadvantaged students
  • Advanced materials to improve sustainability and resilience of civil engineering constructed facilities
  • Structural health monitoring
  • Computational and analytical models to predict mechanical behavior of adaptive and advanced materials
  • Structural component and system-level testing