Alumni

We have been lucky to work with a lot of great team members in the CCHT. This page is a summary of our alumni, including links to their posts and research contributions. If you see yourself on this page and want to update your information, then please send an email to Casey Dietrich. He will be happy to hear from you!

 
Post-Doctoral Researchers

Dylan Anderson
PhD, 2019, Civil Engineering, Oregon State University

Dylan was a post-doctoral researcher, first as an ORISE fellow and then with support from our USCRP project, from Aug 2019 through Apr 2022. He integrated tropical cyclones and long-term drivers into a climate emulator, and he mentored students in the development of a surrogate model for beach and dune erosion. He taught a section of CE 487 during Spring 2021. After finishing his post-doc, Dylan accepted a remote position with the USACE Field Research Facility.

 
Graduate Students

Tomás Cuevas López
MS, 2024, Civil Engineering

Tomás was an MS student from Jan 2022 through Feb 2024, and his research was supported by our DHS CRCoE project. He modernized Kalpana by updating the code to Python 3, modularizing it, and making it easier to use. He simulated thousands of synthetic storms, and then developed a deep neural network for the prediction of peak total water levels at stations along the NC coast. It was a machine learning journey. After graduating, Tomás accepted a position with DHI.

Jessica Gorski
MS, 2023, Civil Engineering

Jessica was an undergrad researcher from Aug 2019 through Jul 2021 and then an MS student from Aug 2021 through Jul 2023, and her research was supported by our USCRP and NOPP projects. She developed real-time forecasts for beach and dune erosion by using thousands of XBeach 1D transects along the U.S. Gulf and Atlantic coasts. She also served as President of our COPRI student chapter. After graduating, Jessica accepted a position with the USGS St. Petersburg.

Johnathan Woodruff
PhD, 2023, Civil Engineering

Johnathan was a PhD student from Aug 2018 through Jul 2023, and his research was supported mainly by our NSF PREEVENTS project. He added subgrid corrections to ADCIRC and demonstrated their accuracy and efficiency for ocean-scale simulations of storm-driven coastal flooding. He served as President of our COPRI student chapter and as Student Chair for the EWC Symposium in 2020. After graduating, Johnathan accepted a position with the USGS St. Petersburg.

Brooke Rumbaugh
MS, 2021, Civil Engineering

Brooke was an MS student from Jan 2020 through Dec 2021 (through the peak of the pandemic!), and her research was supported by our NC Sea Grant project. She developed an ADCIRC model of the Albemarle-Pamlico estuarine system, and then examined its tide-, wind-, river-, and density-driven circulation during Hurricane Irene (2011). After finishing her MS degree, Brooke continued her research for a few months, and then accepted a position with Environmental Resources Management.

Alireza Gharagozlou
PhD, 2021, Civil Engineering

Alireza was a PhD student from Aug 2015 through Jul 2021, and his research was supported by our NC Sea Grant and both USCRP (1 and 2) projects. He was our XBeach expert, and he pushed the boundaries of storm-driven erosion predictions, both by simulating Isabel (2003)’s effect over large domains and by developing a surrogate model based on a library of 1250 XBeach simulations. After finishing his PhD degree, Alireza accepted a position with Taylor Engineering, Inc.

Autumn Poisson
MS, 2021, Civil Engineering

Autumn was an MS student from Aug 2018 through Jul 2021, and her research was supported by our DHS CRCoE project. She identified the earliest signs of hurricane winds and storm surge in a coastal region, so that they can be used as triggers to switch meshes during a storm simulation. She was also our SLOSH model expert and was active in COPRI. Autumn now works at the Alaska Division of Geological and Geophysical Surveys.

Ajimon Thomas
PhD, 2020, Civil Engineering

Ajimon was a PhD student from Aug 2014 through Jul 2020, and his research was supported by our NC Sea Grant and DHS CRCoE projects. He improved the forecasting of storm surge and coastal flooding along the U.S. southeast coast, with a multi-resolution approach to represent the coastal floodplains only when and where they were flooded during the storm. After finishing his PhD degree, Ajimon continued for 3 months as a post-doc. He is now a coastal associate at Moffatt & Nichol.

Carter Rucker
MS, 2020, Civil Engineering

Carter was an MS student from Aug 2018 through May 2020, and his research was supported by our DHS CRCoE project. He improved the accuracy and utility of our downscaling methods for coastal flood guidance, by including losses in overland flow due to frictional roughness. He integrated these methods into Kalpana, and they are used for real-time forecasting. After finishing his MS degree, Carter accepted a position at the USACE Wilmington District.

Rosemary Cyriac
PhD, 2018, Civil Engineering

Rosemary was a PhD student from Aug 2013 through Sep 2018. Her research was supported by our NC Sea Grant and GoMRI CARTHE projects, and her main focus was the modeling of estuarine circulation and surface transport in the northern Gulf of Mexico. She also developed Kalpana, was a co-instructor for CE 382 Hydraulics, and mentored an undergraduate researcher for 2 years. After finishing her PhD degree, Rosemary accepted a position at Atkins.

Nelson Tull
MS, 2018, Civil Engineering

Nelson was an MS student from Aug 2016 through Jun 2018. His research was supported by our NCDS Data Fellows and NSF PREEVENTS projects, in which he developed techniques to downscale and extrapolate our flooding guidance for decision support. This research was conducted in close partnership with NC Emergency Management, and his focus on hazard communication also led to two poster awards. Nelson is now a PhD student at UT Austin, studying with Dr. Paola Passalacqua.

 
Research Assistants

Sheppard Medlin
BS, 2019, Mechanical Engineering

Sheppard was an undergraduate research assistant from Aug through his graduation in Dec 2019, and then continued as a research assistant through Jul 2020. He worked with PhD student Johnathan Woodruff on the NSF PREEVENTS project, learning the OceanMesh2D software and then writing scripts for visualization of downscaled model results. Sheppard is now a coastal analyst at AECOM.

Jenna Choi
BS, 2017, Civil Engineering

Jenna was a research assistant from Dec 2017 through Apr 2018, during the year after she graduated with her BS degree. She worked with PhD student Ajimon Thomas on the DHS CRCoE and NSF PREEVENTS projects, to cut down a mesh to have only open-water regions, so it could be used later for development. After finishing this work, Jenna returned home to South Korea to pursue other opportunities.

 
Undergraduate Students

Brandon Tucker
BS, 2024, Civil Engineering

Brandon was an undergraduate research assistant from Aug 2022 through Apr 2023. He worked with MS student Tomás Cuevas López to develop a machine learning model to predict maps of coastal inundation. He was a key contributor to the development and documentation of Kalpana for downscaling of the flood extents. After finishing this work, Brandon studied abroad in Ireland and the Arctic Circle and then pursued other research opportunities at NC State.

Sydney Crisanti
BS, 2023, Environmental Engineering

Sydney was an undergraduate research assistant from Jan 2021 through Dec 2022. She worked on a benchmarking study of SWAN+ADCIRC, leading to a poster presentation at a university-wide research symposium, as well as an investigation of vertical interpolation methods for computing the baroclinic pressure gradients, leading to an undergraduate research thesis. She is now a research environmental engineer at the ERDC Coastal & Hydraulics Laboratory.

Carter Howe
BS, 2022, Civil Engineering

Carter was an undergraduate research assistant from Feb 2019 through Jul 2022. He worked to improve FigureGen, worked with PhD student Johnathan Woodruff on downscaling and visualizing flooding predictions as part of the NSF PREEVENTS project, and worked with PhD student Jenero Knowles on mesh development for southeast Virginia as part of the DOD ESTCP project. He was the mesh maestro. Carter is now an MS student at Oregon State Univ, working with Dr. David Hill.

Carter Day
BS, 2023, Environmental Engineering

Carter was an undergraduate research assistant from May 2020 through Jun 2022. She investigated the use of ST6 wave physics in the coupled SWAN+ADCIRC models, leading to a poster presentation and research letter. Her work was supported by our DHS CRCoE project. After finishing this work, she studied abroad in Perth, Australia, and then moved into an internship with Hazen and Sawyer.

Chloe Stokes
BS, 2021, Environmental Engineering

Chloe was an undergraduate research assistant from Oct 2018 through Apr 2021, and she became a wizard with editing and manipulation of unstructured meshes. She worked with PhD student Ajimon Thomas and MS student Autumn Poisson as part of the DHS CRCoE project, developing meshes and testing Adcirpolate. Upon graduation, she accepted a position with the City of Monroe, NC.

Marina Weissman
BS, 2019, Environmental Engineering

Marina was an undergraduate research assistant during Fall 2019, during the last semester of her degree program. She worked with PhD student Johnathan Woodruff as part of the NSF PREEVENTS project, using high-resolution DEMs and shapefiles to represent the Caernarvon Marsh. Upon graduation, she accepted a position with EXP Global in Chicago.

Tucker Fulle
BS, 2020, Civil Engineering

Tucker was an undergraduate research assistant from Nov 2018 through Apr 2019, during the junior year of his degree program. He worked with PhD student Alireza Gharagozlou as part of the USACE USCRP project, to examine the feasibility of XBeach model predictions for island breaching, by constructing and testing on idealized domains. Tucker is now a transportation analyst at McAdams.

Emerina Downey
BS, 2020, Civil Engineering

Emerina was an undergraduate research assistant from Jan 2017 through Apr 2018, during two years of her degree program. She worked with PhD student Rosemary Cyriac as part of the GoMRI CARTHE project, to construct a high-resolution ADCIRC mesh for Choctawhatchee River from the Bay through the USGS gauge at Caryville, Florida. After finishing this work, Emerina pursued other research opportunities in our department.

Mohammad Innab
BS, 2018, Civil Engineering

Mohammad was an undergraduate research assistant from Sep 2016 through Apr 2018, during two years of his degree program. He worked to update the FigureGen software to be compatible with the newest version of the GMT library. He edited inside the Fortran code, tested combinations of visualization options, and ran tests on our HPC cluster. In 2021, he joined KS Engineers P.C. in New York.