Ibiyinka Amokeodo (SPH)
Advisor: Dr. Amy Sapkota
Ibiyinka is a First Year PhD Student in the Maryland Institute for Applied Environmental Health at the University of Maryland. She holds a bachelor’s degree in food science and Technology from her home country Nigeria. She also has a Master of Science degree in Public Health from Western Illinois University. Her research interests include the evaluation of microbial quality of food and vegetables, water quality in food production, and infectious diseases.
Christopher (Chuck) Baker (CMNS)
Advisor: Dr. Xin-Xhong Liang
Chuck is a PhD student in the Department of Atmospheric Sciences at UMD. With expertise in mathematics, his research interests include the development and application of planetary boundary layer parameterizations, computational fluid dynamics in extreme weather events, and improving the accuracy level of predictions. Chuck is a rated aviation and drone pilot, a dedicated weather enthusiast, and an avid outdoorsman. Chuck currently serves at the Earth System Science Interdisciplinary Center (ESSIC) focusing on the regional Climate-Weather Research and Forecasting (CWRF) model as part of the Earth System Modeling group (EaSM) at the University of Maryland-College Park.
Dana Buckholz (SPH)
Advisor: Dr. Paul Turner
Dana is a first year PhD student at the Maryland Institute for Applied Environmental Health (MIAEH), where she also obtained her Master of Public Health in Environmental Health. Her research interests include disease and exposure risk (i.e., chemicals, pollutants, infectious diseases), their surveillance, and impact on public health. Prior to beginning her PhD she was a Cancer Research Training Award Fellow at the National Cancer Institute in the Environmental and Epidemiology Branch.
Stephanie Chia (CMNS)
Advisor: Dr. Bill Fagan
Stephanie is a first-year PhD student in the Behavior, Ecology, Evolution and Systematics (BEES) program at the University of Maryland. She received her BS in Biology in Taiwan and an MS in Sustainable Business and Innovation in the Netherlands. She is interested in understanding how climate and land cover changes influence the spatiotemporal distribution of organisms, and how agricultural land use can be optimized to reduce environmental impacts.
Elamin (Amin) Elamin (BSOS)
Advisor: Dr. Meredith Gore
Amin is a PhD student in the Department of Geographical Sciences. He received his Bachelor of Science in Molecular Biology from Yale University, and Masters in Psychology from the University of Maryland. His research interests include human dimensions of global environmental change, environmental and conservation criminology, and the convergence of science, development, and policy.
Emily (Emmie) Healey (SPH)
Advisor: Dr. Rachel Rosenberg Goldstein
Emmie is a doctoral student in the Environmental Health Sciences program at the University of Maryland School of Public Health, Maryland Institute for Applied Environmental Health (MIAEH). She received her BS in Environmental Science and BA in Studio Art from the University of Maryland, College Park, and she earned her master’s degree in Marine Biosciences from the University of Delaware. Emmie now studies microbial water quality and alternative water sources in the Water Quality, Outreach and Wellness (WOW) Laboratory. She is interested in the microbial communities growing in reclaimed water and on irrigated food.
Maia Karpovich (CMNS)
Advisors: Dr. Eugenia Kalnay, Dr. Safa Mote and Dr. Jorge Rivas
Maia is a fourth-year PhD student in the Applied Mathematics program, with a specialization in environmental economics. She attended the University of Oklahoma, graduating in 2018 with BS degrees in Meteorology and Mathematics. Her work centers on building combined mathematical models that track the dynamics of the Earth and human systems. She is currently investigating how human energy and water overuse is altering Earth’s ecology, and how those changes may lead to past or future collapses of human societies.
Meigan McManus (ENG)
Advisor: Dr. Allen Davis
Meigan is a first-year Ph.D. student in the department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. Her prior research evaluated the impact of road salts on the ability of bioretention systems, a type of stormwater control measure, to remove pollutants. Her current research is done in partnership with the UMD School of Public Health and evaluates the viability of a pilot advanced wastewater purification system, which will be used to supplement a Maryland community’s drinking water supply.
Cara Peterson (AGNR)
Advisor: Dr. Katherine Tully
Cara is a PhD student in the Plant Science and Landscape Architecture department at UMD, where she also completed her M.S. She conducts research on cover crops with the Agroecology Lab at UMD and the Sustainable Agricultural Systems Lab (SASL) at the USDA’s Beltsville Agricultural Research Center. Her dissertation research utilizes both modeling and fieldwork to evaluate the effect of winter cover crops on spring soil moisture content and availability to the successive cash crop.
Vivek Ravichandran (SPH)
Advisor: Dr. Sacoby Wilson
Vivek is a doctoral student at the Maryland Institute for Applied Environmental Health (MIAEH). He obtained his Master of Public Health in Environmental Health from the Emory Rollins School of Public Health. His current doctoral research focuses on air quality monitoring surrounding warehouses in the District of Columbia, Maryland, and Virginia (DMV) area. He aims to broaden his scope of work within environmental health epidemiology to include the thoughtful consideration of water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH), soil contamination, farming practices and food justice into updating current environmental justice screening and mapping (EJSM) tools. His goals are to leverage such tools to facilitate the microtargeting of overlooked environmental justice communities/rural farmland for public health interventions.
Amanda Siciliano (ENG)
Advisor: Dr. Liangbing Hu
Amanda is a second-year Ph.D. student in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering working in the Bing Research Group. With expertise in civil engineering from her bachelor’s degree, Amanda researches the creation of energy-efficient buildings and sustainable construction products. She is passionate about waste-recovery initiatives, reducing plastic consumption and repurposing recycled materials.
Linda Waters (ENG)
Advisor: Dr. Allison Reilly
Linda is a second-year Ph.D. student in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and its Center for Disaster Resilience at UMD. She received her Bachelors in Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering from Webb Institute. Her research explores the practical intersections of infrastructure resilience and sustainability to identify concrete policies, informed by engineering models, that build both simultaneously. Linda takes a multidisciplinary approach to her research, leveraging machine learning, statistical analyses, and optimization in tandem with public policy and social equity considerations.
