CSDMS organization
The Executive Committee (executive committee chair, steering committee chair and the working group chairs) is the primary decision-making body of the CSDMS, and meets twice a year to approve the annual science plan, the semi-annual reports, the management plan, budget, partner membership, and other day-to-day issues that arise in the running of the CSDMS. The Executive Committee also develops the By-Laws and Operational Procedures, to be approved by the Steering Committee. The Executive Committee develops and implements the 5-year Strategic Plan.
The Executive Committee further:
- Reviews proposals from Working Groups for development that are within the priorities of the Annual Science Plan and CSDMS mission;
- Ensures that CSDMS develops and maintains the capability to support collaborative proposals;
- Reviews the ongoing CSDMS business operations through regular meetings, teleconferences, AccessGrid sessions, electronic mail, etc.
- Ensures scientific progress in multiple areas of landscape-basin evolution (LBE) by providing the computational infrastructure needed for improved modeling;
- Ensures the connection of LBE research with related scientific thrusts of scientific computing and Geoinformatics through the establishment of strategic partnerships, and
- Ensures transparency of governance and intellectual involvement of community via reasonable criteria for partner membership and a mechanism that allows community input.
Greg Tucker
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Executive Committee Chair; CSDMS Executive Director
Greg Tucker is a Professor of Geological Sciences at the University of Colorado at Boulder and is a fellow of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES). His research focuses in the area of computational and theoretical geomorphology. He brings his training in geosciences, archaeology, and numerical computing to bear on understanding the dynamics of earth’s surface topography, both in the context of the “deep time” evolution of mountain ranges and other landforms, as well as contemporary processes such as river flooding, debris-flow erosion, and gully formation. In advancing our understanding of landscape dynamics, he and his students combine field measurements, digital terrain data, and numerical modeling. In recognition of this work, Prof. Tucker was awarded the Ralph Alger Bagnold Medal by the European Geosciences Union in 2012. Prof. Tucker has authored or co-authored over 80 journal publications and book chapters. He is also a co-creator of the popular CHILD landscape evolution model. He currently leads an NSF-supported project to develop Landlab, a contribution to the Community Surface Dynamics Modeling System that provides a Python-language library for efficient creation and coupling of two-dimensional numerical models. Prof. Tucker is a graduate of Brown University, with a BA in Anthropology, and of Penn State University, with a PhD in Geosciences. Prior to joining CU-Boulder, he was a postdoctoral research associate in MIT’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and later a faculty member at Oxford University’s School of Geography and the Environment. He was elected CSDMS Deputy Director in November of 2015 and assumed the role of Executive Director in October, 2017. |
Irina Overeem
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CSDMS Deputy Director
Irina Overeem is an Associate Professor at the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research, and the Department of Geological Sciences at the University of Colorado. She graduated cum laude from Wageningen University, The Netherlands with a M.Sc. and engineering degree in Soil, Water and Atmosphere. She received her Ph.D. in Civil Engineering and Applied Geosciences from Delft University of Technology in The Netherlands. Her research focuses on river and coastal systems and their dynamic response to changing environmental factors. She develops numerical models to explore sediment transport processes, morphological change, depositional patterns and stratigraphy. Field observations of rivers and deltas worldwide guide her design of models and critical assessment of their predictions. Overeem has published over 50 peer-reviewed articles in journals like Nature Geoscience, GRL, Journal of Geophysical Research, as well as in domain journals like Sedimentary Geology, Basin Research and The Cryosphere. Her current projects with students and postdocs focus on modeling sedimentation and its impacts on delta sustainability, with special emphasis on the Ganges-Brahmaputra delta, and on rivers and deltas in a rapidly changing Arctic region, with field projects in Greenland and Alaska. Overeem leads a NSF-funded project to develop community cyberinfrastructure for modeling of permafrost processes. She won the National Oceanographic Partnership Program Award for work on Arctic Coastal Erosion in 2010. Overeem worked as a postdoctoral fellow with Jaia Syvitski between 2002-2005, and then became an Assistant Professor in Applied Earth Sciences at Delft University. In late 2007, she returned to the University of Colorado to join the CSDMS team as the Education and Knowledge Transfer Expert. Overeem assumed the role of deputy director in October 2017. |
Brad Murray
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Steering Committee Chair
Brad received all his degrees from the University of Minnesota –a BA (Journalism) and a BIS (Science) in 1986, a Masters (Physics) in 1990, and a PhD (Geology) in 1995—and was a postdoc at Scripps Institution of Oceanography until 1998. He is currently Professor of Geomorphology and Coastal Processes at Duke University. Brad studies landscape evolution and pattern formation in a variety of environments, but concentrates these days on the morphodynamics of shallow sea beds, tidal marshes, and sandy and rocky coastlines. Brad uses relatively simple numerical models to explore hypotheses, usually motivated by field observations, about how landscapes in these environments come to be and how they might respond as the climate forcing shifts. Increasingly, this research involves two-way couplings between physical and biological (including human) processes. Brad is a long-term community supporter and served as Chair of the CSDMS Coastal Working Group since its inception in 2007 until August of 2017. In August 2017, he accepted election (by unanimous approval of the full CSDMS community) to CSDMS Steering Committee Chair. |
Christopher Sherwood
 Chris Sherwood |
Interagency Working Group Chair
Chris Sherwood received a B.A. from Bowdoin College (Economics and Environmental Studies) and an M.S. and Ph.D. from the University of Washington (Geological Oceanography). He is currently a research oceanographer with the U.S. Geological Survey in Woods Hole, MA. Before joining the USGS in 1999, he worked for three years in Hobart, Tasmania as a research scientist with the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation and for ten years as a research scientist for Battelle at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland and Sequim, Washington. Chris has been a proponent of open-source software and helped develop the community sediment-transport modeling system used in the Regional Ocean Modeling System (ROMS). Chris is interested in the development and application of sediment-transport models, and in making field measurements that provide insight and critical constraints for those models. With CSDMS, Chris is working to expand the interactions between government agencies and CSDMS scientists. In particular, Chris hopes to foster projects that allow government agencies to capitalize on the CSDMS investments on model algorithms and infrastructure. He accepted the role of Interagency Working Group Chair in September 2014. |
Nicole Gasparini
 Nicole Gasparini |
Terrestrial Working Group Chair
Nicole is an associate Professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Tulane University. She received her MS and PhD in Civil and Environmental Sciences from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1998 and 2003, respectively. Nicole was a Postdoctoral Researcher at Arizona State University, School of Earth and Space Exploration from 2006-2007, a GSA/USGS AAAS Congressional Fellow, 2005-2006 and a Bateman Postdoctoral Fellow at Yale University from 2003-2005. Her research focuses on landscape evolution over various spatial and temporal scales. She is interested in the impacts of climate and tectonics on landscape evolution. Nicole was elected as Chair of the Terrestrial Working Group in May, 2016. |
Leslie Hsu
 Leslie Hsu |
Terrestrial Working Group Co-Chair
Leslie is the Coordinator of the Community for Data Integration at the US Geological Survey. She received her MS in Geosciences from University of Arizona in 2002 and her PhD in Earth & Planetary Science from UC, Berkeley in 2010. Leslie is currently serving as the 2017-2018 Chair of the Geoinformatics Division of GSA. She has also been involved with the Interdisciplinary Earth Data Alliance and was a co-PI of the Sediment Experimentalist Network Research Coordination Network. Her research has focused on fluvial seismology, debris flow erosion, creeping faults, alluvial fans and atmospheric chemistry. Leslie’s interests also include data and information technology and facilitation of communities of practice. |
Andrew Ashton
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Coastal Working Group Co-Chair
Andrew is an Associate Scientist with Tenure at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Geology and Geophysics Department. He received his undergraduate degree from Cornell University in 1995 and Ph.D. from Duke University, Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences, Division of Earth & Ocean Sciences in 2005. His research interests involve development and testing of numerical and conceptual models of the formation and evolution of coastal sedimentary environments; plan-view delta evolution along wave-dominated coasts; coastal response to climate change, sea-level rise and anthropogenic activities; application of reduced complexity morphodynamic models to study earth-surface evolution. Andrew was elected Costal Working Group Co-Chair in August 2017. |
Eli Lazarus
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Coastal Working Group Co-Chair
Eli is a Lecturer in Geomorphology at the University of Southampton, Geography and Environment Unit. He also leads the Environmental Dynamics Lab, focusing on natural and anthropogenic processes of physical change in coastal and terrestrial landscapes. His research interests include coastal and terrestrial morphodynamics; geopattern formation and self-organization; human–environmental systems; Earth-surface processes in the Anthropocene; and complexity science. Eli was elected Costal Working Group Co-Chair in August 2017. |
Courtney K. Harris
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Marine Working Group Co-Chair
Courtney received her PhD from the University of Virginia College of Arts and Sciences, Department of Environmental Sciences, Charlottesville, VA, and is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Physical Sciences, School of Marine Science at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, VIMS. Her research has been directed at improving the ability to quantify and predict sediment transport on continental shelves over a variety of temporal and spatial scales. Her interdisciplinary projects have considered the interactions between shelf sediment transport and small scale stratigraphy, sediment budgets, geochemistry, coastal oceanography, and climatology with a research focus on numerically modeling suspended sediment transport on shelves. Her current projects include collaboration with oceanographers and geologists to develop a community sediment transport model by developing and testing numerical models that account for sediment transport and oceanographic circulation. Research interests include sediment transport dynamics, continental shelf boundary layer flow and sediment transport, sediment dynamics on tidal salt marshes and in lagoons, hydrodynamic interpretation of sedimentary deposits, post-depositional alteration and preservation of sedimentary strata, transport of sediment-associated contaminants, and evolution of continental margin morphology. Courtney was elected to lead the CSDMS Marine Working Group as its Chair in September, 2012. |
Michael Steckler
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Marine Working Group Co-Chair
Mike is currently a Lamont Research Professor affiliated with the Marine Geology and Geophysics section of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University. His research interests include tectonics of sedimentary basins, isostasy, stratigraphic modeling and marine geophysics. Mike received his Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1981 (and a B.S. from MIT in 1976). He was elected as Co-Chair of the CSDMS Marine Working Group in October, 2018. |
Wei Luo
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Education and Knowledge Transfer (EKT) Working Group Chair
Wei Luo earned a Bachelor’s degree in Geology (remote sensing emphasis) from Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China, in 1987, a Master's degree in GIS from Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China in 1990, and a PhD in Earth and Planetary Sciences from Washington University, St. Louis in 1995. After graduation, he joined the Department of Geography at Northern Illinois University and he is currently a Presidential Research Professor at NIU. Wei’s current research focuses on digital terrain analysis related to terrestrial and Martian surface processes and he has been actively involved a variety of education activities, including developing the Web-based Interactive Landform Simulation Model – Grand Canyon (WILSIM-GC) to enhance students learning about landform evolution. He accepted the role of Chair of the Education and Knowledge Transfer Working Group in September 2015. |
Tian-Jian (Tom) Hsu
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Cyberinformatics and Numerics Working Group Co-Chair
Tian-Jian Hsu (Tom) earned a Bachelor's degree (Ocean Engineering) from National Taiwan University in 1994 and a PhD (Civil Engineering) from Cornell University in 2002. He is currently Associate Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at University of Delaware (UD). Before joining UD, he was a Postdoctoral Scholar and Assistant Scientists at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and Assistant Professor at the University of Florida. He received a NSF Early Career Development (CAREER) Award in 2007. Hsu’s main research covers numerical modeling/simulation of various cohesive and non-cohesive sediment transport. Hsu and his team currently focus on turbulence-resolving simulation of wave-supported fine sediment transport, surf/swash zone sediment transport, and river plumes. In the past five years, his group devoted major efforts to develop open-source numerical tools for sediment transport in the OpenFOAM framework. He accepted the role of Chair of the CSDMS Cyberinformatics and Numerics Working Group in September 2015. |
Scott Peckham
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Cyberinformatics and Numerics Working Group Co-Chair
Scott is a Senior Research Scientist and Fellow at the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research (INSTAAR) at University of Colorado, Boulder. His research interests include cyberinfrastructure for modeling, hydrologic modeling, fluvial landscape evolution, seafloor and stratigraphic evolution, nonlinear PDEs, differential geometry, scaling theory, sediment plumes, coastal dynamics, efficient computer algorithms and source-to-sink sediment transport. Scott received his undergraduate and masters of science degrees from Oregon State University (Physics, 1987 and Engineering Physics, 1989, respectively) and his Ph.D. from the University of Colorado, Boulder in Geophysics and Hydrology, 1995. He accepted the role of Co-Chair of the CSDMS Cyberinformatics and Numerics Working Group in April of 2017. |
Focus Research Group Committee Members
Venkat Lakshmi
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Hydrology Focus Research Group Co-Chair
Venkat graduated from University of Roorkee in 1987 with a Bachelor’s degree in Civil Engineering and earned his Doctorate in Civil and Environmental Engineering in 1996 from Princeton. He worked at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center from 1996-1999 as a research scientist in the Laboratory for the Atmospheres. His research interests are in the area of hydrometeorology and hydro-climatology, land-atmospheric-ecological interactions through modeling and remote sensing. He is a Full Professor and former Chair of the Department of Earth and Ocean Sciences at the University of South Carolina (2008-2011). He is currently the Cox Visiting Professor of Earth Sciences at Stanford University (2015-2016) and also held this role from 2006-2007. Dr. Lakshmi has over 60 peer-reviewed articles and 200 presentations. He has served as the thesis advisor for around 20 graduate students. He has served as Editor EOS, Associate Editor of Water Resources Research, Journal of Hydrologic Engineering and Journal of Geophysical Research and currently is serving as Associate Editor of Journal of Hydrology and Communications Editor for Vadose Zone Journal. He has served on the board of directors of the Consortium of Universities for the Advancement of Hydrological Sciences (CUAHSI) and on the American Geophysical Union Hydrological Executive Council, and has been the co-chair for the Hydrology Section for the Fall Meeting. He has served as a member of the Executive council for the American Geophysical Union Heads and Chairs of Geosciences. He is currently the chairman of the Chapman Conference committee for AGU. He has published in the areas of catchment hydrology, satellite data validation and assimilation, field experiments, land-atmosphere interactions, satellite data downscaling, vadose zone and water resources. Dr. Lakshmi accepted the role of Chair of the Hydrology Focus Research Group in September 2015. |
Mary Hill
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Hydrology Focus Research Group Co-Chair
Dr. Mary C. Hill is a Professor in the Geology Department at the University of Kansas, and emeritus at the US Geological Survey following a 33-year career there. She authored the popular PCG2 solver for MODFLOW, and 140 reports and articles on solvers, nonlinear regression, confidence intervals, and calibration methodology. She co-authored UCODE, MODFLOW-2000, OPR-PPR, and MMA. She has experience modeling saltwater intrusion, groundwater supply, stream interaction, and regional groundwater flow and transport, including flow and transport beneath the proposed Yucca Mountain USA high-level nuclear waste site. She has taught semester and short courses since 1981. She has received many awards and honors. In 2016, she was selected for the CSDMS Life-Time Achievement Award and was elected as Fellow of AGU. Dr. Hill holds a PhD in Civil Engineering from Princeton University. Mary was elected to Co-Chair the Hydrology FRG in March of 2017. |
Peter Burgess
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Carbonates and Biogenics Focus Research Group Chair
Peter received his PhD in stratigraphic forward modeling at the University of Oxford, United Kingdom, where he developed an interest in quantitative geology and numerical models. He was a postdoc in Caltech, Los Angeles as well as at the Liverpool University, United Kingdom where he broadened his experience developing numerical models as well as gaining valuable experience in field-based sedimentology. After four years as a lecturer in Cardiff University he joined the Shell research lab in Rijswijk in 2002, working on stratigraphic forward modeling as well as plate modeling and regional geology. Peter left Shell in 2010 and is now Professor of Sedimentary Geology at Royal Holloway University of London where he teaches various courses ranging from petroleum geology to field mapping, and pursues research interests in topics ranging from the geodynamics of basin formation to fine-scale heterogeneity of carbonate strata, all linked by development and application of stratigraphic forward models. Peter accepted the responsibility to lead the CSDMS Carbonates and Biogenics Focus Research Group as its Chair in September, 2008. |
Chris Jenkins
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Carbonates and Biogenics Focus Research Group Co-Chair
Chris Jenkins received his Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge, UK in 1979 in biostratigraphy, following a BSc HonsI degree from The University of Sydney, in geology, physics and math. He has extensive at-sea experience in the fields of marine sediments and geophysics including swath sonar mapping. Chris joined the University of Colorado, Boulder in 2002 and is also an associate at the University of Adelaide. Active funded projects involve the worldwide distributions of seafloor materials and their geoacoustic properties, physics of biological seafloors, machine-learning information extraction for building sediment databases, and numerical process modeling for the seafloor. He builds oceanographic data-software applications for marine infrastructure and operational projects. Biologically colonized seafloors, including carbonate sediments, are currently his primary thread of research. Chris accepted the role of Co-Chair of the Carbonates and Biogenics Focus Research Group in December 2015. |
Raleigh Hood
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Chesapeake Focus Research Group Chair
Raleigh Hood received a B.S. in Oceanography from the University of Washington and a Ph.D. in Oceanography from Scripps Institution of Oceanography. He subsequently did postdoctoral research at Oregon State University and the Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science. He is currently a Professor of Oceanography at Horn Point Laboratory, University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science. Raleigh began his research career as a biological oceanographer when he was an undergraduate at the University of Washington, studying harmful algae blooms in Puget Sound. He has since conducted research in coastal and open ocean environments all over the world, including the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans and both the east and west coasts of North America. Presently his research is focused primarily on using models to simulate and predict biogeochemical and ecological variability in marine environments. Raleigh has been a leader in promoting open-source software for many years. He founded the Chesapeake Community Modeling Program (CCMP) in 2002, which is dedicated to advancing the cause of accessible, open-source environmental models of the Chesapeake Bay in support of research & management efforts. He is currently the Program Manager for the CCMP and the Chair of the CCMP Steering Committee. Raleigh is a founding member of the CSDMS Chesapeake Focus Research Group and he has served as Chair since July 2014. |
Lejo Flores
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Critical Zone Focus Research Group Co-Chair
Lejo Flores received his B.S and M.S. in Civil Engineering from Colorado State University in 2001 and 2003, respectively. He then enrolled in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at MIT and received his Ph.D. in Hydrology in 2009. After a brief postdoc at MIT he began as an Assistant Professor at Boise State University in the Department of Geosciences in late 2009 and was promoted to Associate Professor in 2014. Research focus areas include modeling coupled human and natural systems to quantify feedbacks between land management and regional hydroclimate and use of remote sensing data to improve model-based ecohydrologic prediction. He is serves as an associate editor for the Journal of Hydrometeorology and co-chairs the AGU Hydrology Section Remote Sensing Technical Committee. He was elected as co-chair of the CSDMS Critical Zone Focus Research Group in October 2014. |
Michael Young
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Critical Zone Focus Research Group Co-Chair
Michael Young is currently Associate Director, Environmental Division, Bureau of Economic Geology at the University of Texas, Austin. He moved to U Texas in 2010 from Desert Research Institute (DRI), Nevada, where he served most recently as Acting Executive Director of the Division of Hydrologic Sciences and as Research Professor. His personal research directions are in vadose zone hydrology, soil science and ecohydrology. Michael received his M.S. in Geological Sciences (Hydrology) from Ohio University in 1986 and his Ph.D. in Soil and Water Science from University of Arizona in 1995. He was recently elected as Fellow of the Geological Society of America and Soil Science Society of America. Michael was elected as co-chair of the CSDMS Critical Zone Focus Research Group in July of 2017 (representing the International Soil Modeling Consortium). |
Moira Zellner
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Human Dimensions Focus Research Group Co-Chair
Moira Zellner is an Associate Professor, Department of Urban Planning and Policy and a research associate professor in the Institute for Environmental Science and Policy at UIC. Having completed her undergraduate degree in ecology in Argentina, she pursued graduate studies in urban and regional planning and in complex systems at the University of Michigan (Ph.D. 2005). Before coming to the US, she worked in Argentina as an environmental consultant for local and international environmental engineering firms and for the undersecretary of Environment in the City of Buenos Aires, in projects related to domestic and hazardous waste management, river remediation, industrial pollution control, and environmental impact assessments. She also participated in interdisciplinary and international research projects of urban air pollution and of the spread of tuberculosis through public transportation. In her position at UIC, Dr. Zellner has served as Principal Investigator and Co-Investigator in interdisciplinary projects examining how specific policy, technological and behavioral factors influence the emergence and impacts of a range of complex environmental problems, where interaction effects make responsibilities and burdens unclear. Her research also examines the value of complexity-based modeling for participatory policy exploration and social learning with stakeholders and decision-makers. Dr. Zellner also teaches a variety of workshops on complexity-based modeling of socio-ecological systems, for training of both scientists and decision-makers. She has served the academic community as reviewer of journals and grants spanning across the social and natural sciences. Moira accepted the responsibility to lead the CSDMS Human Dimensions Focus Research Group as its co-Chair in August, 2016. |
Mark Rounsevell
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Human Dimensions Focus Research Group Co-Chair
Prof. Mark Rounsevell holds the David Kinloch Michie Chair of Rural Economy & Environmental Sustainability within the School of GeoSciences at the University of Edinburgh. He was formerly Head of the Institute of Geography & the Lived Environment (2011-2013) and the Centre for the study of Environmental Change & Sustainability (2007-2011), and was the founding Director of the University’s Global Environment & Society Academy (2011-2014). |
Phaedra Upton
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Geodynamics Focus Research Group Co-Chair
Phaedra Upton, a landform modeller at GNS Science, New Zealand, received her PhD in Geology at the University of Otago in 1996. Her research focuses on process and mechanics. Dr. Upton studies the geodynamic responses of collisional orogens to far field tectonic boundary conditions, surface boundary conditions and the extent to which rheological parameters can influence that response. She is also interested in the geomorphology of actively deforming regions, particularly New Zealand and Taiwan, and the coupling between tectonics and landscape evolution. In her research she uses a variety of numerical methods, constrained by geophysical, geochemical, and field observations. In addition to her position at GNS, she is also a Faculty Associate at the University of Maine, USA. Phaedra accepted the responsibility to lead the CSDMS Geodynamics Focus Research Group as its co-Chair in March, 2013. |
Mark Behn
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Geodynamics Focus Research Group Co-Chair
Mark Behn is an Associate Scientist at the Department of Geology & Geophysics at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI). Mark received his PhD in 2002 at MIT/WHOI in Marine Geology and Geophysics. He uses geodynamic models to quantify the behavior of tectonic and magmatic systems in marine and terrestrial environments. His primary research interests are in Geodynamics and geophysics; dynamics of faulting and magma injection at mid-ocean ridges; seismic anisotropy and imaging of sub-asthenospheric mantle flow; rheology and mechanical behavior of oceanic transform faults; seismic and crustal structure of volcanic arcs; ice-sheet dynamics; and computational geodynamic modeling. Mark served as a steering committee member on NSF MARGINS AND GeoPRISMS program, and is still heavily involved in GeoPRISMS. Mark accepted the responsibility to lead the CSDMS Geodynamics Focus Research Group as its co-Chair in March, 2013. |
Brian Fath
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Ecosystem Dynamics Focus Research Group Co-Chair
Brian D. Fath is Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at Towson University (Maryland, USA) where he teaches courses in ecosystem ecology, environmental biology, networks, and human ecology and sustainability. Prof. Fath has taught courses on ecological networks and modeling in Portugal, Denmark, China, France, Germany, Italy, Croatia, and South Africa. Prof. Fath is also research scholar at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Laxenburg, Austria and is Editor-in-Chief for the journal Ecological Modelling. He has published over 100 research papers, reports, and book chapters and co-authored the book A New Ecology: Systems Perspective, Ecological Modelling (4th edition), and was Associate Editor in Chief for 5-volume Encyclopedia of Ecology. He currently serves as President of the North American Chapter of International Society for Ecological Modelling. He held a Fulbright Distinguished Chair position at Parthenope University of Naples, Italy in spring 2012. Professor Fath accepted the role of Chair of the Ecosystem Dynamics Focus Research Group in November 2014. |
Kim de Mutsert
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Ecosystem Dynamics Focus Research Group Co-Chair
Kim de Mutsert is an assistant professor at the Department of Environmental Science and Policy at George Mason University, and a faculty fellow at the Potomac Environmental Research and Education Center. She has a PhD in Oceanography and Coastal Sciences from Louisiana State University, and a MS in Biology from the University of Amsterdam. She is specialized in coastal and estuarine fish ecology, with a research focus on the effects of environmental and anthropogenic stressors on nekton abundance, community structure, and foodweb dynamics. Examples of such stressors include eutrophication, pollution, habitat alteration, hypoxia, fishing, and changes in freshwater discharge. She uses a combination of field sampling, community analysis, stable isotope analysis, and ecosystem modeling in her projects. Professor de Mutsert accepted the role of Co-Chair of the Ecosystem Dynamics Focus Research Group in August 2016. |
CSDMS Steering Committee
The CSDMS Steering Committee (SC) is comprised of 10 members: 8 selected by the EC to represent the spectrum of relevant Earth science and computational disciplines, and 2 selected by Partner Membership. The cognizant NSF program officer or his/her designate, and the Executive Director or his/her designate, serve as ex officio members of the SC. During SC meetings, there may be occasions when these ex officio members would exclude themselves from discussions.
The Steering Committee meets once a year to assess the competing objectives and needs of the CSDMS; will comment on the progress of CSDMS in terms of science (including the development of working groups and partner memberships), management, outreach, and education; and will comment on and advise on revisions to the 5-year strategic plan. The Steering Committee will provide a report to the Executive Director at the close of its meeting, to which s/he will respond within two weeks.
Brad Murray
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Steering Committee Chair
Brad received all his degrees from the University of Minnesota –a BA (Journalism) and a BIS (Science) in 1986, a Masters (Physics) in 1990, and a PhD (Geology) in 1995—and was a postdoc at Scripps Institution of Oceanography until 1998. He is currently Professor of Geomorphology and Coastal Processes at Duke University. Brad studies landscape evolution and pattern formation in a variety of environments, but concentrates these days on the morphodynamics of shallow sea beds, tidal marshes, and sandy and rocky coastlines. Brad uses relatively simple numerical models to explore hypotheses, usually motivated by field observations, about how landscapes in these environments come to be and how they might respond as the climate forcing shifts. Increasingly, this research involves two-way couplings between physical and biological (including human) processes. Brad is a long-term community supporter and served as Chair of the CSDMS Coastal Working Group since its inception in 2007 until August of 2017. In August 2017, he accepted election (by unanimous approval of the full CSDMS community) to CSDMS Steering Committee Chair. |
Guillermo Auad
 Member, Steering Committee |
Guillermo is a senior advisor for BOEM and the Department of the Interior. He earned his PhD in Oceanography at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego, in 1995. He then became a faculty at Scripps and an adjunct Professor of Oceanography at Palomar College. While at Scripps’ Climate Research Division, he combined observational and modeling results to investigate dynamical and climatic problems on scales ranging from a few days for coastal processes to interdecadal variability for basin-scale phenomena. In 2008 Guillermo’s seminar on Climate Change aired on public television to a potential audience of 27 million households in the US. More recently, he was one of the US Government lead reviewers of the IPCC report, and a contributing author to the National Climate Assessment. Since his arrival to BOEM in 2010, Guillermo has focused on the project management of different research projects, having spearheaded national and international partnerships. More recently he has focused on using socio-ecological systems to address management, policy and governance issues through resilience-thinking. Since 2013 he has been collaborating with the White House Office of Science Technology and Policy to improve the coordination of environmental research in the Arctic region. Guillermo has been part of the CSDMS Steering Committee since 2012. |
Cecelia DeLuca
 Member, Steering Committee |
Cecilia has Ms degrees in Engineering from Boston University and in Meteorology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Starting as a software Engineer at MIT Lincoln Laboratory at 1996 and later on at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), Cecilia DeLuca developed an interest in the development of large, high-performance software systems and governance models for community software. Since 2002 Cecilia manages the Earth System Modeling Framework (ESMF) Core Team who are responsible for building high-performance, flexible software infrastructure to increase ease of use, performance portability, interoperability, and reuse in climate, numerical weather prediction, data assimilation, and other Earth science applications. Thus, Cecilia blends expertise in high performance computing, software project management, Earth sciences, and community organization. As section head of the Earth System Modeling Framework, ESMF, she is principal investigator of several million dollar projects like the “Earth System Curator”; an effort to better integrate models and datasets. Cecelia accepted the responsibility to serve as a member of the CSDMS Steering Committee in September, 2009. |
Tom Drake
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Member, Steering Committee |
Dr. Tom Drake is the Team Leader for the Coastal Geosciences program at the Office of Naval Research. The Coastal Geosciences program funds research to enable prediction of the 4D coastal, estuarine and riverine environments. Tom received a B.S in Geology from M.I.T in 1980 and a Ph.D. in Geology from UCLA in 1988. He was a research oceanographer and postdoctoral researcher at Scripps Institution of Oceanography until 1995, when he joined the faculty at North Carolina State University. As an associate professor at NCSU, Tom taught geomorphology, coastal processes, and sediment transport physics courses. He joined ONR in 2003. Tom's research interests include the physics of granular materials and sediment transport and he has published papers on field, experimental, and computational studies of transport phenomena at a particle-by-particle scale. Since joining ONR Tom's research interests have expanded to include aerial and satellite remote sensing, optics, acoustics, and development of unmanned vehicles for environmental sensing. Tom is the lead manager of the Community Sediment Transport Model supported by the National Ocean Partnership Program. Tom has served as a member of the CSDMS Steering Committee since its inception in 2007. |
Marcelo H. Garcia
 Member, Steering Committee |
Marcelo H. García holds a Diploma in Water Resources Engineering from Universidad Nacional del Litoral in Santa Fe, Argentina, and both MSCE and PhD degrees in Civil Engineering from the University of Minnesota. He has been on the faculty of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign since 1990, and has served as Director of the Ven Te Chow Hydrosystems Laboratory since 1997. Prior to joining UIUC, he was a Research Fellow at St. Anthony Falls Hydraulic Laboratory, University of Minnesota. His research interests are in the field of river mechanics, sediment transport, gravity currents, sedimentation engineering and environmental hydraulics. He is best known for his work on sediment entrainment from riverbeds, flow and transport in vegetated channels, the mechanics of oceanic turbidity currents, fluid-sediment-structure interaction in oscillatory boundary-layer flows, oil-sediment-aggregate transport after oil spills and dynamics of debris and mudflows. He has played a leadership role with the organization of the River, Coastal, and Estuarine Morphodynamics (RCEM) series of conferences. He was also editor and co-author of “Sedimentation Engineering: theory, measurements, modeling and practice” Manual of Practice 110, published by ASCE in 2008. |
Bert Jagers
 Member, Steering Committee |
Dr. Bert Jagers graduated cum laude in 1995 in Applied Mathematics (M.Sc.), and also cum laude in Applied Physics (M.Sc.) at the University of Twente, the Netherlands. In 2003 he obtained his Ph.D. title from the Civil Engineering department at the same university for a study on the behavior and modeling of braided rivers. This study involved the analysis of detailed morphological processes in braided rivers, data acquisition in the Jamuna River, Bangladesh, and the numerical modeling of the large scale morphological changes using various modeling techniques (neural networks, object-oriented modeling, cellular models). He is currently working at Deltares on various (inter)national research and advisory projects in the field of river engineering and morphology. Research addressed a.o. non-uniform sediment mixtures, bank erosion, bed forms, and floodplain roughness. Currently he is as technical coordinator software development of the 1D, 2D and 3D modeling systems SOBEK and Delft3D involved in model coupling (OpenMI, ESMF) and the improvement and extension of physical process formulations. He is also involved in the ONR community efforts concerning Delft3D and the Coastal Sediment Transport Model. Bert is interested in the CSDMS effort to collect state-of-the-art environmental knowledge as much as possible into open and consistents frameworks of numerical components suitable for further research and operational use. Bert has served as a member of the CSDMS Steering Committee since its inception in 2007. |
Boyana Norris
 Member, Steering Committee |
Boyana Norris received her Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2000. She joined Argonne National Laboratory as a postdoctoral researcher in 1999 and is currently a computer scientist in the Mathematics and Computer Science Division. She is actively involved in three main areas of research: scientific component software development, automatic differentiation (AD), and performance modeling and tools. She has been involved in the Common Component Architecture Forum since 1999, focusing on the development of components for adaptive linear system solution, as well as leading the component infrastructure usability effort and participating in component specification definition. In the area of automatic differentiation, the main focus is on the development of robust tools for the differentiation of C and C++ codes, and a modular design and implementation of automatic differentiation tools, enabling rapid AD algorithm development and reuse of differentiation strategies by front-ends for different programming languages. In the area of performance modeling and optimization, Boyana is performing research on performance bounds modeling and source analysis tools for estimating performance bounds of C and C++ code. She is also developing annotation-based empirical performance tuning tools, as well as component infrastructure for managing performance experiments and data. She has authored or co-authored over 50 publications and co-edited a volume on automatic differentiation. Boyana's interest in CSDMS centers on the application of component technology to (1) provide consistent interfaces to software developed within CSDMS and (2) ensure that the component software infrastructure and tools meet the needs of CSDMS researchers. Boyana accepted the responsibility to serve as a member of the CSDMS Steering Committee in September, 2009. |
Efi Foufoula-Georgiou
 Member, Steering Committee |
Efi is currently a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental at University of California, Irvine. Previously she was the Joseph T. and Rose S. Ling Chair in Environmental Engineering, and a Founding Fellow of the Institute on the Environment at the University of Minnesota. She has served as Director of the NSF Science and Technology Center “National Center for Earth-surface Dynamics” (NCED) and of the St. Anthony Falls Laboratory at the University of Minnesota. She received a diploma in Civil Engineering from the National Technical University of Athens, Greece, and an M.S. and Ph.D. (1985) in Environmental Engineering from the University of Florida. Her area of research is hydrology and geomorphology, with special interest on scaling theories, multiscale dynamics and space-time modeling of precipitation and landforms. Current areas of research include modeling and estimation of space-time rainfall from multiple sensors, stochastic theories of transport on the Earth's surface, river network dynamics, channel morphology, and hydrologic response. She has served as associate editor of Water Resources Research, J. of Geophysical Research, Advances in Water Resources, Hydrologic and Earth System Sciences, and as editor of J. Hydrometeorology. She is past chair of the Board of Directors for CUAHSI (Consortium of Universities for the Advancement of Hydrologic Sciences) and a member of the Board of Trustees of UCAR (University Corporation for Atmospheric Research). She is currently a presidential appointee to the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board and the elected President of the Hydrology Section of AGU. |
David Mohrig
 Member, Steering Committee |
Dr. Mohrig is currently Professor in the Department of Geological Sciences at the University of Texas, Austin. He received his M.S and Ph.D in Geological Sciences from the University of Washington ('87 and '94 respectively). His research focuses on the application of sedimentary deposits and transport processes to unraveling the evolutions of terrestrial and submarine landscapes. They study the behavior of topography generated at the interface between a granular material and a moving fluid from very short to very long time and space scales, with particular emphasis on processes controlling channel formation, both on land and in the deep ocean. Research methods used by his group include carefully designed laboratory and natural experiments on sediment-transporting flows, field studies of modern and ancient sediment-dispersal systems, theoretical modeling of evolving granular-bed topography, and the remote sensing of subsurface sedimentary deposits using seismic data. |
Ex Officio Steering Committee Members
Richard Yuretich
 Ex Officio Member, Steering Committee |
Dr. Richard Yuretich is Director of the GeoInformatics program at the National Science Foundation. He has multiple interests in lake sediments, clay minerals, environmental geochemistry, sedimentology and education research. He received his Ph.D. in Geology from Princeton University. Prior to joining NSF, Richard was Professor of Geosciences at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. In 2014, he became the Program Manager at NSF for CSDMS. |
Jaia Syvitski
 Ex Officio Member, Steering Committee |
Prof. Jai P.M. Syvitski received a Ph.D. in both oceanography and geological sciences (1978) at the University of British Columbia, developing a quantitative understanding of particle dynamics across the land-sea boundary. Jai then worked as an Assist. Professor in Geology and Geophysics at the Univ. Calgary (1978-1980) and then as a Senior Research Scientist with the Geological Survey of Canada at the Bedford Institute of Oceanography (1981-1995). During the BIO period, Prof. Syvitski was appointed Adjunct Professor at Dalhousie U., U. Laval, Memorial U., and INRS-oceanologie. In 1995 Jai joined the U. Colorado - Boulder as a Professor of Geological Sciences, and until 2007 served as Director of INSTAAR - an Earth and Environmental Systems Institute. While at CU, other faculty appointments include Applied Mathematics, Atmosphere and Ocean Sciences, Hydrological Sciences, and Geophysics. Jai has over 500 publications, including authorship or co-authorship of 57 peer-reviewed books, and has served in various editorial positions for many international journals. Professor Syvitski has taken leadership roles in large International Projects (e.g. IGBP, SAFE, ADFEX, SEDFLUX, COLDSEIS, STRATAFORM, EuroSTRATAFORM, CSDMS), and served as an advisor for NSF, ONR, ARCUS, LOICZ, IGBP, IUGS, INQUA, SCOR, GWSP, and various energy, mining, and environmental companies. Prof. Syvitski has worked in the forefront of Computational Geosciences: sediment transport, land-ocean interactions and Earth-surface dynamics, and has won numerous awards for these efforts. In 2007 Jai became the Executive Director of CSDMS and Emeritus Director in 2017. |
Rudy Slingerland
 Ex Officio Member, Steering Committee Rudy Slingerland Department of Geosciences Penn State University 503A Deike Building University Park, PA 16802 Email: sling@geosc.psu.edu Tel: +1 814 865-6892 |
Past Chair, Steering Committee
Dr. Rudy L. Slingerland received his graduate education in geology (M.S. 1974, PhD 1977) at Pennsylvania State University. He has served as a professor at Penn State for over 25 years. Between 1997-2003 he was Head of the Department of Geosciences and presently he is the Interim Associate Dean for Research, College of Earth and Mineral Sciences. He has mentored 29 MSc and PhD students and received the 2005 Wilson Award for Excellence in Teaching. His research interest is in sedimentary processes and deterministic modeling over a wide variety of environments and timescales. Current projects investigate; 1) clinoforms genesis in the Gulf of Papua, 2) the conditions that give rise to river channel bifurcations, 3) composition of sediment delivered to offshore basins, 4) geometry and internal characteristics of deltas, 5) the role of horizontal motions in orogenic landscapes in the Himalayas, and 6) Feedback loops between evolving land-use practices and sediment erosion off the landscape in the Appalachian mountains. Rudy has been closely involved with the CSDMS effort from the first hour; he has been part of the organizing committee for the workshops that laid out this initiative and was one of the lead authors on the CSDMS position papers. Professor Slingerland ably served as the Steering Committee Chair for many years, and since September, 2012, continues to contribute to CSDMS in the position of Past Chair of the CSDMS Steering Committee. |
Previous Steering Committee Members
| Previous SC Members | Period served |
|---|---|
| Dr. Mike Ellis | 2007 - 2008 |
| Dr. Tom Dunne | 2007 - 2009 |
| Dr. Richard Yuretich | 2008 - 2010 |
| Dr. Dave Furbish | 2007 - 2013 |
| Dr. Gary Parker | 2007 - 2013 |
| Dr. Rick Sarg | 2007 - 2013 |
| Dr. Dan Tetzlaff | 2007 - 2013 |
| Dr. Marty Perlmutter | 2009 - 2015 |
