UC Berkeley Water Research and Opportunities Portal

An introduction to key engineered systems (e.g., energy, water supply, buildings, transportation) and their environmental impacts. Basic principles of environmental science needed to understand natural processes as they are influenced by human activities. Overview of concepts and methods of sustainability analysis. Critical evaluation of engineering approaches to address sustainability.

Hands-on design course in applied fluid mechanics, hydrology and water resources. Course goes beyond basic examples of fluid flow to develop environmental engineering solutions to real-world problems. A class team project is used to (1) explore the design process and project management; and (2) to integrate concepts from hydrology and fluid mechanics with structural, geotechnical and/or transportation engineering for a holistic design approach. Specific project topics vary with offering. Example topics include: engineering for air quality, design for sea-level rise mitigation, and development of alternative water supplies to address scarcity and post-disaster management.

The course provides a framework to address contemporary water-resources problems, and to achieve water security for local areas and broader regions. Students will become aware of critical water-resources issues at local, national and global scales, and learn to formulate solutions for water-resources problems using engineering, natural-science and social-science tools. The main focus is on California and the Western United States, with comparative analysis for other regions.

Transport and mixing of solutes in water. Focus on rivers, lakes, estuaries, and wetlands, with some discussion of groundwater and the atmosphere. Basic equations of fluid motion will be used to contextualize and/or derive applied empirical equations for use in specific cases of applied environmental engineering practice. Example applications include outfalls, total maximum daily loads, residence time, and longitudinal dispersion.

A quantitative introduction to the hydrology of the terrestrial environment including lower atmosphere, watersheds, lakes, and streams. All aspects of the hydrologic cycle, including precipitation, infiltration, evapotranspiration, overland flow, streamflow, and groundwater flow. Chemistry and dating of groundwater and surface water. Development of quantitative insights through problem solving and use of simple models. This course requires one field experiment and several group computer lab assignments.

Urban demand for water; water supply and economic growth; water utility economics; irrigation demand; large water projects; economic impacts of surface water law and institutions; economics of salinity and drainage; economics of groundwater management.

This course considers the formation, implementation, and impact of public policies affecting agriculture and the environment. Economic approaches to public lawmaking, including theories of legislation, interest group activity, and congressional control of bureaucracies. Case studies include water allocation, endangered species protection, water quality, food safety, drainage, wetlands, pesticides, and farmworker safety. Emphasis on examples from California.

This course is designed to introduce students to the major sampling systems used in natural resources and ecology. It also introduces students to important sampling and measurement concepts in grassland, forest, wildlife, insect, soil, and water resources. May be taken without laboratory course 102BL.

Introduction to the science underlying biological and physical environmental problems, including water and air quality, global change, energy, ecosystem services, introduced and endangered species, water supply, solid waste, human population, and interaction of technical, social, and political approaches to environmental management.

This course focuses on a survey of physiological approaches to understanding plant-environment interactions from the functional perspective. Lectures cover physiological adaptation; limiting factors; resources acquisition/allocation; photosynthesis, carbon, energy balance; water use and relations; nutrient relations; linking physiology; stable isotope applications in ecophysiology; stress physiology; life history and physiology; evolution of physiological performance; physiology population, community, and ecosystem levels.

Maximilian Auffhammer focuses on forecasting greenhouse gas emissions, impacts of air pollution on agriculture, microeconomic theory, economics of climate change and econometrics.

His projects includes:
1) Adverse Reproductive Outcomes in a Population Exposed to Perfluorinated Compounds in Drinking Water (with Martha Rogers, Gina Waterfield, Philippe Grandjean, and David Sunding, 2018);
2) Turning water into jobs: The impact of surface water deliveries on farm employment and fallowing in California’s San Joaquin Valley (with Dina Gorensteyn and David Sunding, 2018);
3) Forecasting Urban Water Consumption in California: Rethinking Model Evaluation (with Steven Buck, Hilary Soldati, and David Sunding, 2018).

Tomas McKay focuses on the process of design and how architecture is able to transfer information between different scales; working with the site, the client, the budget and the environment. He has been lately involved in building stronger and long-lasting relationships between Chile and California, in conservation and urban planning issues throughout private and public institutions. His main research interest is in water and climate change adaptation.

His projects includes:
1) Interdisciplinary Studio ARCH 202, Living with Water which focuses on adapting to climate change in Hong Kong
2) Pachacamac Park, a recycling water project for a public park in Lima, Peru

Boaxia Mi focuses on physicochemical processes emphasizing nanomaterials and membrane science/technology for drinking water purification and wastewater reuse. Her lab is developing sustainable membrane processes for emergency water supply, water reuse, desalination, and sustainable energy harvesting

Her projects include:
1) Nanomaterials to target removal of materials such as heavy metals.
2) Graphene oxide (GO) nanomaterials to synthesize a fundamentally new class of water filtration membranes for emerging water contaminants.
3) Nanotechnology to collect solar power for desalination process

Kara Nelson focuses on addresses innovative strategies to improve the sustainability of urban water infrastructure, including technologies for potable and non-potable water reuse, nutrient recovery, decentralized systems, intermittent water supply, household water treatment, and affordable sanitation. In particular, Dr. Nelson’s research focuses on the control of waterborne pathogens, including mechanisms of pathogen inactivation and new detection methods.

Her projects include:
1) A WASH project looking at impact of improved sanitation interventions on transmission of enteric pathogens from human and animal sources through a randomized controlled trial in rural Bangladesh
2) Influence of intermittent water supply (IWS) on the diversity and dynamics of the IWS microbiome.
3) The impacts of DPR systems on microbial water quality through research on methods of advanced microbial water quality assessment.

David Sedlak focuses on environmental chemistry, water recycling, contaminant fate in receiving waters, natural treatment systems, and reinvention of urban water systems.

His projects include:
1) The Fate of Trace Organic Compounds in Treatment Wetlands
2) In Situ Chemical Oxidation of Persistent Organic Contaminants

Lisa Alvarez-Cohen focuses on environmental microbiology and ecology, biotransformation and fate of environmental and wastewater contaminants, and innovative molecular and isotopic techniques for studying microbial ecology of communities involved in wastewater treatment and bioremediation communities. Specifically, her research focuses on the application of omics-based molecular tools and isotopic techniques to understand and optimize the bioremediation of emerging and conventional environmental contaminants by naturally occurring microorganisms and to facilitate beneficial nutrient removal from wastewater.

Her projects include:
1) Trichloroethene Remediation, specifically investigating how dichlorination communities respond to the changes in these conditions by constructing various Dhc-containing consortia in batch and completely mixed flow reactors.
2) Characterization of the fate and biotransformation of fluorochemicals in aqueous film forming forms (AFFF)
3) Nitrogen Removal from Wastewater by Anammox

Inez Fung focuses on climate change and atmospheric science with particular attention towards geophysical fluid dynamics and large-scale numerical modeling, remote sensing of earth systems, atmosphere-ocean interactions, and atmosphere-biosphere interactions. Additionally, she is the co-director of the Berkeley Institute of the Environment.

Her current projects center around:
1) Changes in East Asian monsoon precipitation
2) Subsurface water dynamics and tree resilience/mortality to droughts

Dr. Jones’s research uses quantitative Earth system science tools –computer models, uncertainty quantification techniques, etc. – to gain decision-relevant insight into how humans affect the climate and vice versa. Major themes include the “usability” of regional climate projections for adaptation planning, the resilience of energy, water, and food systems to multiple stressors, the role of land use change in efforts to both reduce and adapt to climate change, and the tightly coupled interactions among people, built infrastructure, and environmental processes in urban contexts.

Projects include:
1) Project Hyperion, within which he leads a stakeholder engagement process with water management professionals in four case study basins across the US aimed at evaluating and improving the decision-relevance of high-resolution climate projections for long-range water system planning
2) Efforts to understand urban environmental processes (heat waves, vegetation dynamics, hydrologic flows and their implications for energy and water resources) in the context of changing climate, land use, and demographics.

Maggi Kelly’s lab group’s motto is “mapping for a changing California”, and they use a range of geospatial data and analytics – from spatial modeling, remote sensing, drones, lidar, historical archives, surveys, participatory mapping, and the field – to gain insights about how and why California landscapes are changing, and what that change means for those who live on, use, and manage our lands.

Michael Mascarenhas focuses on water access and environmental justice, water charity and affordability, Indigenous water rights, and human right to water.

His projects include:
1) Thirsty for Environmental Justice. Flint, Detroit, and the War over Michigan’s Water.
2) Previous Projects:
a. Where the Waters Divide. Neoliberalism, White Privilege, and Environmental Racism in Canada (Lexington Books, 2015)
b. New Humanitarianism and the Crisis of Charity: Good Intentions on the Road to Help (Indiana University Press, 2017)

The Bay Area Water Quality Fellowship is open to graduate students whose studies are related specifically to water quality issues that affect the San Francisco Bay. It is intended to support scientific research in the following topics:
-the exposure or effect, if any, of organisms within the San Francisco Bay estuary to selenium, metals, and/or organic chemicals through food chain transfer
-the degree, if any, to which sediments are a source of exposure for organisms within the San Francisco Bay estuary to selenium, metals, and/or organic chemicals
-other research that involves the effect of pollution on the San Francisco Bay estuary and/or its ecosystem.

Applications are due at the beginning of Spring semester. Recipients will receive $15,000 for the following Fall semester. The award can be used as a payment for registration fees and/or stipend.

The Berkeley Water Center seeks to create more resilient, equitable, and sustainable water systems with access to safe water for all by
leveraging Berkeley research to accelerate groundbreaking solutions for
the world’s water problems.

The Berkeley Water Center cultivates, facilitates and supports a broad range of interdisciplinary research projects to address local and global water challenges; builds connections among academia, policy-makers, and practitioners to enable research-driven solutions to emergent water problems; translates and promotes research results for a wide audience to better inform decision-making about water system planning and development; and empowers UC Berkeley students with opportunities, skills and a research community to develop innovative ideas and to become water leaders.

The Berkeley Water Center is supported by the College of Natural Resources and the College of Engineering. Its affiliates work across the University of California, Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and have a broad range of research interests and expertise, spanning engineered infrastructure and technology development; planning, monitoring and understanding of natural and engineered water systems; understanding of social, institutional and political contexts of water systems; equitable access to water; water law and policy; economics of urban and agricultural water systems; and public health.

CERCH is a world leader in researching and highighting key aspects of environmental health risks, especially as they impact pregnant women and their children. To accomplish this mission, CERCH investigates exposures to future parents and children and evaluate long term effects on child health, behavior, and development. We work to help key stakeholders translate our research findings into sustainable strategies to reduce environment-related childhood disease, directly involving local communities in the process. CERCH prioritizes engaging communities to inform study design, implementation, and dissemination and helping to identify key solutions to pressing environmental issues.

Currently CERCH is investigating drinking water and birth outcomes with attention to drinking water data involving nitrates and arsenic.

CERCH plans to expand research into:
-Nitrates in Salinas Valley water
-Use of produced water in agriculture
-Pharmaceuticals in potable or irrigation water from recycled wastewater

The Canadian Studies Program is involved in research and investigation on the renewal terms of the Canadian-American Columbia River Treaty and the management of the river system. The project is focused on science requirements and needs for a modernized treaty. The research looks into how water is managed throughout the river system through dams and river flows, and also looks into how environmental impacts are assessed and how to promote ecological sustainability throughout the system.

There are great academic and funding opportunities for any students looking to join the research on the Columbia River Treaty project.

Headquartered at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, California, the National Alliance for Water Innovation, or NAWI, was selected in 2019 to support the U.S. Department of Energy’s Energy-Water Desalination Hub. Along with co-founding laboratories Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Colorado, NAWI brings together a world-class team of industry and academic partners to examine the critical technical barriers and research needed to radically lower the cost and energy of desalination.

NAWI’s focus is on early-stage research on desalination and associated water-treatment technologies to secure affordable and energy-efficient water supplies for the United States from nontraditional water sources. Our five-year research program will be guided by an annual roadmapping process designed to engage stakeholders from the water-treatment and water-use ecosystem, and by an annual request-for-proposal process to solicit research ideas through a competitive, peer-reviewed evaluation and selection process.

The UC Berkeley Superfund Research Center is an NIEHS-funded program studying the toxic effects of Superfund chemicals (including drinking water contaminants) on human health and innovative approaches to environmental remediation. Our Center has been continuously funded for over 30 years. In our current funding cycle, we have identified four complex problems associated with hazardous waste sites that have proven intractable to current methods. These problems are how to better assess: 1) cumulative impacts from multiple environmental stressors (e.g. chemical exposures, stress and obesity); 2) past exposures, especially early-life exposures and their contribution to risk; 3) the effects of chemical mixtures and their impact on remediation efforts; and, 4) the complex transformation of chemicals to reactive intermediates and their ability to act through multiple mechanistic pathways. Our six interactive projects (4 biomedical and 2 engineering) and 5 cores, are addressing these issues through original research, translation to appropriate end-users and community engagement efforts.

Graduate students and postdoctoral researchers who work with a Center PI on a Superfund-related project are considered Superfund Trainees. The Trainee Core, under the leadership of Professor Luoping Zhang, offers trans-disciplinary mentorship, education, and training in environmental health, environmental toxicology, environmental engineering and data science as well as professional development and leadership opportunities. Trainees have hosted a booth at CalDay for the past two years and have presented their work at the NIEHS Superfund Research Program Annual Meetings each year.