Meet The Team

Siddharth Saksena

My research group focuses on hydrology, flood forecasting, hydroinformatics, and climate change impacts on water quantity and quality. I hold a BTech (2012) in Civil Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee, India, an MS (2014) and a PhD (2019) in Civil Engineering from Purdue University.

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My research focuses on developing tools for enhancing the flood resilience of communities in response to land use and climate change involving watershed-scale flood modeling and forecasting using an integrated hydro-systems analysis.

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I am a biostatistics enthusiast (brought up in a family of doctors) and frequently collaborate with the faculty in the College of Veterinary Medicine on studies related to cardiac output measurements under anesthesia where I get to further my skills in statistical analysis and enjoy learning about fluid mechanics in medicine. 

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I enjoy self-learning musical instruments, traveling with my wife, and listening to podcasts.

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Rezvane Ghorbani

My name is Rezvane, and I'm originally from Iran. I'm currently a Ph.D. student in Environmental and Water Resources Engineering (EWR) at the Charles Edward Via, Jr. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Virginia Tech.

I completed my bachelor's degree in Civil Engineering at Guilan University in Iran, followed by a master's degree in Civil Engineering, with a focus on Water Resources Management, from K. N. Toosi University of Technology in Tehran, Iran.

Through my work, I aim to develop more effective strategies for managing water resources in the face of changing environmental conditions.

Research Interests:  Hydrology, surface water/groundwater modeling, and climate change. 

Soumya Guchhait

Hi! I am Soumya, a Ph.D. student in the Saksena Research Group, a.k.a. The FloodGeeks at VTCEE. I am from Kolkata, India. My academic background is in Civil Engineering, with a Master's from IIT Guwahati and a Bachelor's from Jadavpur University, Kolkata. I've worked as a Junior Research Fellow for the National Mission for Himalayan Studies in India. My previous research focused on climatological and flood studies in the Teesta and Brahmaputra River Basin

 
Research Interests: My research interests include floods, people, climate change impacts, numerical modeling, H&H modeling, socio-hydrology, statistics, data science. I am interested in developing machine learning tools to better understand human-water interactions in future, as well. I have some experience in geospatial statistics, GIS, hydrological, socio-hydrological, and climate modeling. I often make (sometimes futile) predictions on rain, river flows, and soccer matches.

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Outside of research, I enjoy literature, movies, and music. Fun fact: I was a national quiz runner-up representing Jadavpur University. Feel free to reach out at soumyag@vt.edu for any river-flood-human-AI-related ideas—whether scientific, artistic, or plain goofy!

Julia Post

Details coming soon

 
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Zoe Travers

Details coming soon

 
Research Interests:

Lalit Pal

I am currently a Postdoctoral Scholar at Virginia Tech in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. I have completed my PhD from IIT Roorkee, India. I conducted a part of my doctoral research at Purdue University as a Visiting Research Scholar. I hold a M. Tech. degree in Water Resources Engineering from SVNIT, India. My doctoral research was focused on comprehensive and high-resolution assessment of urban flood response to changing climate. My masters research revolved around quantifying the impact of climate and anthropogenic changes on catchment hydrology using hydrological modelling.

Research Interests: My current research aims at developing an automated framework for climate change impact assessment on urban flooding as part of The Urban Flooding Open Knowledge Network (UF-OKN) project. I integrate conventional process-based modelling approaches with physics-informed machine learning and AI. My broad research interests include Hydrologic modelling, Hydroclimatic extremes, Climate change attribution and impact assessment. 

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I love hiking and trekking in nature (especially the Himalayan mountains). Keenly interested in ancient human civilizations and their evolution. Recreational home cook (Indian cuisines!)

Vishwa Shah

I am pursuing a Ph.D. in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Virginia Tech. I come from Vadodara, a small town in Gujarat, India. My academic background includes a Bachelor's degree in Civil Engineering from The M.S. University in Vadodara, which she earned in 2013, followed by an M.S. in Environmental Science from the New York Institute of Technology in 2016, and an M.Eng in Environmental Engineering from the Stevens Institute of Technology in 2019. Prior to starting my Ph.D., I worked as an Environmental Engineer in an environmental consulting firm to gain practical experience.

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Research interests: Water Quality modeling, the impact of land use changes, statistical and empirical methods for evaluating environmental data, and model quality.

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An interesting fact about me is that I am currently learning how to swim in order to overcome my fear of water.

Momtaz Jahan

I am a MS student in Civil and Environmental Engineering at Virginia Tech. I completed my Bachelor in Water Resources Engineering and MS in Water Resources Development from Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology. I also hold an MS in Biological Systems Engineering at VT with concentration on watershed management.

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I have research experience in climate change risk and vulnerability assessment, qualitative evaluation of climate services, geospatial analysis, and soil and water nutrient analysis.

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Research Interests: I am interested in the investigation of climate change and land use changes in flood hydrology. Currently, I aim to use different hydrological and hydrodynamic models to address the changes in flood forecasting methodologies over the short and long term. I am also interested in investigating the impact of hydrological extreme events on socio-economic systems and infrastructure through the use of statistical analysis and machine learning. I enjoy reading, listening to music, and cooking when I am not working or studying.

Landen Furr

Details coming soon

 
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Erin Lee, MS (2024)

Working as a Civil Environmental Engineer at the US Army Corps of Engineers since September 2024.