Students

Megan Blumenauer is a PhD student in the Ecosystem Services lab with Dr. Rippy. She received her B.S. in Civil and Environmental Engineering from University of Maryland in 2023 and her M.S. in Civil and Environmental Engineering from Virginia Tech in 2025. Her research is focused on green infrastructure ecosystem services, with an emphasis on cultural services provisioning (sense of place) and potential tradeoffs with hydrologic services

Ali Gagnon is a PhD student at the Hampton Roads Sanitation District who is co-supervised by Drs Rippy (secondary), and Bott (primary). She received her M.S. in Environmental Engineering from Virginia Tech. Her research focuses on improving process control at Water Resource Recovery Facilities (WRRFs) using traditional control engineering with data-driven and model-based methods.

Diver Marin joined the lab as a PhD student, Spring 2023. His research will focus on the fate and transport of salt through stream networks, as part of the lab's National Science Foundation funded Growing Convergence Research project. He is jointly supervised by Professors Grant and Gomez-Velez.

Alisha Sutton is a PhD student in the Ecosystem Services lab with Dr. Rippy. She received her M.S. in Civil and Environmental Engineering from Virginia Tech in 2023. Her research is focused on PFAS and SOC accumulation in animal tissues and wild food safety