About the wateReview Team
Research Project Team
Associate Professor and Extension Specialist interested in Water Resources Management
I provided feedback on the research landscape in Latin America in this project. My motivation to work on this project was to provide tailor-made information and tools for water scientists in Latin America. We, I believe, need to balance the access of water resources information in Latin America.
Director of Science and Technology, Vitidore Inc.
My motivation to contribute to this project came from a summer of agricultural field research in Colombia where I first experienced the critical disparity between the breadth of water research opportunities and limited scientific resources. To shed light on this issue and explore the research landscape in the rest of the region, I helped conceptualize the project, led weekly meetings from 2018-2020, and shepherded the research to its completion as a peer-reviewed manuscript and open-source software package.
Research Scholar, UC Davis & Data Scientist, Vitidore Inc.
My participation in this project stems from a desire to use artificial intelligence for good by empowering scientists and stakeholders from Latin America and the Caribbeans with a quantitative assessment of knowledge gaps. I designed and led data science and machine learning efforts from the corpus collection to the consolidation of the model results into insights reported in a peer-reviewed journal and supported by an open-source software package.
Research Scholar, UC Davis
I am a remote sensing data scientist, applied to watershed management. I was motivated to work on this project because I experienced the water research challenges in Latin America. I helped with the research design, project contextualization, and created network visualizations. Also, I lead project dissemination, science communication and collaborative platform design process. We need to face the water challenges in LAC and this project increases the understanding of the water research landscape in Latin America.
Bilingual Climate and Water Scientist, Union of Concerned Scientists.
I work on developing strategies for vulnerable sectors and populations in California to cope and adapt to the current and projected impacts of climate change, particularly related to water. I helped conceptualize the project, did some analysis, and visualizations. I was motivated because of the amazing team that we had. Also, with climate change, effective water resources management in Latin America is vital and this project highlights the areas where more research and action are needed.
PhD Candidate, UC Davis Water Management Lab
I am a graduate student in Hydrologic Sciences at UC Davis, specializing in streamflow hydrology and its influence on riparian ecology. I was motivated to participate in this project to bring more awareness to areas that have been overlooked from a water management perspective. I supported data collection and analysis for the Latin America project, as well as manuscript preparation.
Assistant Professor, University of South Carolina
Dr. Erfan Goharian’s research focuses on applying systems thinking and Artificial Intelligence to support integrated management of water resources. I participated in an early stage of brainstorming and shaping the research ideas, and then provided feedback on the research methods and overview in Latin America. My motivation to work on this project was to better understand how interactions in coupled human-natural systems are shaped by climate, environmental, economic, social and political changes in Latin America.
Postdoctoral fellow, Eawag (Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology)
I conduct research and policy analysis at the intersection of water, cities and climate change, with a focus on governance and qualitative methods. I have conducted multiple case studies in Latin America. I participated in this project through research design, analysis and writing. I was motivated by its emphasis on interdisciplinarity and collaboration to address knowledge gaps within the region’s water research. With rising environmental and socio-economic challenges, this type of research is key to fostering more sustainable and inclusive development.
PhD Candidate, UC Davis Water Management Lab
My research focus is on social-ecological resilience in river basins. My primary motivation for this project was to explore water management trends and the status quo in Latin America, including its research diversity, connectivity, and feedback between countries. I contributed to the study conception, data collection, and paper review.
B.S. in Biological Sciences, UC Davis
For my undergraduate studies, I studied biology and Spanish at UC Davis. My motivation to participate in this project was rooted in the reforestation and sustainability volunteer work that I have done in Latin America – I wanted to see these countries from a research standpoint. One of the roles I had during this project was completing a quantitative literature review on peer reviewed research for data validation purposes. I also helped develop tools to analyze the data and visualize it, creating maps, matrices, and cluster dendrograms.
Research Data Scientist, UC Davis DataLab
I am a data scientist specializing in humanities and social science research problems. I led the corpus cleaning and topic modeling portions of this project. I collaborated on this project because of my research interest in using novel data science methods to uncover trends in text corpora over time. It is important to study Latin America and the Caribbean because of the region’s diverse environments, cultures, and peoples and because the region remains underrepresented in the global community.
Platform Design Team
Postdoctoral Scholar, UC Davis DataLab
Tyler Shoemaker develops and implements methods for text analysis and natural language processing across a variety of research projects, ranging from the digital humanities to environmental and health sciences. His investments in the project stem from his interest in using data science methods to analyze text at scale and in creating data-driven narratives. He led the web design portion of the project.
Eva Wynn
Environmental Science and Management undergraduate, UC Davis
My role in this project was to create written content for the WateReview platform based on the completed research paper and discussions with team members, as well as to help translate the platform into Portuguese. My main motivations for this project stem from the dedication exhibited by the entire team and a desire to understand water research and management on an international scale.
Hanna Wang
Environmental Science and Management undergraduate, UC Davis
My main role was to work as a web developer to help explain how to use this website and interpret the visualizations using the research paper as well as feedback from the team. What initially drew me to this project was my interest in learning more about scientific research and Latin America.
Giselle G. Barajas
Environmental Science and Management Undergraduate, UC Davis
I reviewed and translated website materials into Spanish along with working with the team to assess each other’s material. My motivation for this project flows from my interest in discovering and providing tools to combat climate change’s current and incoming conditions. As water availability is vital, providing information on what is currently researched by each country is a helpful aid to determining the extent of preparation for future changes. Due to Latin America’s large role in the global food and agriculture sector, further growth in knowledge on water availability and access is crucial.
