I am a Postdoctoral Scholar at the Department of Environmental Sciences, University of California Riverside. My research is aimed at gaining knowledge and understanding in the use of chemical and isotopic tracers in hydrogeology. My main areas of expertise include the use of conventional chemical techniques, geochemical modelling and geostatistics to identify the groundwater provenance in aquifers and to study water-soil interactions including salinization processes.

I have five years of experience in analyzing groundwater chemistry and collecting rainwater samples. I worked in groundwater related issues in Spain (Onyar River Basin, Llobregat River Basin) and North (Iberá Estuary) and Central (Matanza-Riachuelo River Basin) Argentina. I have planned and conducted many surveys, including building a rainwater monitoring network for a 2300 km2 basin.

sarmengo@ucr.edu

Dr. Sanghyun Lee

Sanghyun Lee is a postdoctoral scholar in the Department of Environmental Sciences at the University of California, Riverside, working with Dr. Hoori Ajami. He completed his PhD in the Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering with a Computational Science and Engineering concentration at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His research interests are focused on surface and subsurface hydrology, sediment fate and transport, analyses of geospatial data, development, and integration of hydrologic models, algorithms, and analyses of ecosystem responses under environment changes. His overall goal is to foster a better understanding of the hydrological processes that are likely to determine the fate of our physical environment by adopting and integrating emerging technologies. 

Dr. Julio César Pachón Maldonado

Co-advised by Dr. Daniel Hirmas

Julio completed his B.S. in Science of Natural & Environmental Systems at Cornell University in 2014, worked with an NGO in tanzania for a year, and finally earned a Ph.D. at the University of Florida in 2021 in Soil and Water Sciences with Dr. Allan Bacon studying soil microaggregation across wide spatial areas in the U.S. and Africa. Julio's continuous goal is to improve long term management of natural resources by enhancing our understanding of the development of soil structure and its impacts on biogeochemical cycles. Currently, as a Postdoctoral Scholar with Dr. Hoori Ajami and Dr. Daniel Hirmas, Julio is working towards improving our understanding of bedrock driven processes on developing preferential flow paths.

juliop@ucr.edu

Dr. Yusen Yuan 

Yusen Yuan is a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Environmental Sciences, University of California Riverside. His research expertise is in eco-hydrology and isotope geochemistry. In his previous work, Yusen set up and optimized two isotope-based eco-hydrology models. Currently, Yusen is working on quantifying evapotranspiration processes in agricultural ecosystems of Central Valley using a combination of water 18O/2H isotopes and numerical modeling. The goal of his research is to better understand plant water use and groundwater recharge processes in agricultural ecosystems of Central Valley.

yuseny@ucr.edu

Alyssa Duro

Co-advised by Dr. Daniel Hirmas

Alyssa earned her BS in Environmental Sciences from the University of California, Riverside in 2020, then continued her studies at UCR as a PhD student in pedology. Her dissertation work aims to quantitatively and objectively describe the spatial distribution of soil properties using multi stripe laser triangulation, proximally-sensed hyperspectral imaging, and high resolution photography in order to understand the mechanisms underlying soil structure and related soil functions including carbon storage and hydraulic properties.

aduro005@ucr.edu

webpage: https://sites.google.com/ucr.edu/amd/home

Clarissa Carretta

Co-advised by Dr. Daniel Hirmas

I am a Junior Specialist providing support to the labs of Hoori Ajami and Daniel Hirmas at the Department of Environmental Sciences, University of California Riverside. I graduated from UCR in 2021 with my BS of Geology and have had the privilege of spending my gap year continuing the research I began in my undergrad. Since 2020, my main project has been on the creation of the NEON-NRCS Dataset to link soil morphological descriptions from NEON sites across the United States to lab data. I also assist with field campaigns, perform standard lab analyses of soil and water properties, and help out with whatever tasks need to be done around the lab!

ccarr045@ucr.edu

William Scott Burgess  

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BS in Mathematics, Digital Agricultural Fellow (2021-2022)

Maxim Shapovalov 

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BS in Earth & Planetary Sciences (2021-2022)

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