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

Chuqiang Chen is a PhD student working with Dr. Husic. He received his B.S. in Hydroscience & Engineering from Sichuan University in 2024. His research focuses on leveraging large-sample dataset and deep learning in hydrologic modeling, especially in understanding hydrologic pathways.

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 Palacio is a Ph.D. student at the OWML, supervised by Dr. Admin Husic and Dr. Stanley Grant. He holds both a B.S. and an M.S. in Environmental Engineering from the Universidad de Antioquia in Medellín, Colombia, specializing in Hydrology during his master’s studies. His doctoral research investigates freshwater salinization across local and continental scales, with particular emphasis on identifying salinity sources, transport pathways, and environmental drivers in stream networks.

Abby Percich is a Ph.D. student working with Dr. Husic. She received her B.S. in Civil Engineering from the University of Kansas in 2021. Her research focuses on the impacts of land use change and urbanization on sediment sourcing.

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

Md Redowan Rashid is a PhD student in the Environmental and Water Resources program at Virginia Tech. He joined Dr. Furst’s lab in Fall 2024. He earned his M.S. degree in Civil and Environmental Engineering in 2024 from North Carolina A&T State University, where he also completed an Advanced Waste Management Certificate. His current research focuses on investigating the environmental impacts and variability of PFAS precursors in surface water systems.