A postdoctoral researcher (aka "postdoc") is a person who has earned a PhD degree, but is seeking to gain a second proficiency and additional experience, with an eye toward an eventual faculty position. A postdoc can last from 1-5 years. Because I view a postdoc as a transitional position, my preference is to regularly encourage the postdoc to work effectively toward earning their next job as a professor or whatever else they seek as a career path. I provide mentoring on technical skills, writing, creative scientific thinking, scholastic life, DEI, and permanent job applications. Faculty positions are extremely competitive, and increasingly so with the onset of the covid pandemic. Realistically, to garner a faculty position the postdoc period is a time for taking initiative, exhibiting grit, and working very effectively. Postdocs have the most freedom in their time (neither teaching nor taking classes) , which means they need to develop strong time management skills to be successful. A postdoc can also be a terrific opportunity to make an impact on society in the applicaiton of one's research to local environmental problems. Among my former postdocs trained 2000-2016, all are now tenure-track professors, except one who leads a consulting firm. My most recent postdocs since 2017 have tended to take more diverse career paths.
Current Postdocs
Dr. Zhihao Wang
Machine learning tools to design river site selection and classify streams in a region
Urban stream dynamics influencing habitats and human encampments
Dr. Nikhil Kumar
Dry summer subtropicsal urban region hydroclimatology
Vulnerability and resilience of unsheltered encampments in urban stream corridors to flash floods
Dr. Anzy Lee
Ecohydraulics of California's diverse river types
Past Postdocs
Dr. Herve Guillon
Machine learning in geomorphology
Reach-scale channel type prediction
Fractal scaling of river catchments
Principal Data Scientist at ag-tech startup Vitidore
Dr. Romina Diaz-Gomez
Remote sensing of rivers
Machine learning prediction of terrestrial river corridor grain size distributions from topographic indicators alone
Machine learning prediction of riparian vegetation presence/absence from topographic indicators alone
Dr. Colin Byrne
Ecogeomorphology of California's river archetypes
River classification software development
Hydraulic Engineer at U.S. Bureau of Reclamation
Dr. Sebastian Schwindt
Ecogeomorphic restoration design of gravel/cobble rivers
River Architect software development
Head of Hydro-Morphology Group at University of Stuttgart
Dr. Andrew B. Gray
Asessment of watershed scale sediment sources and sinks in an agriculture-dominated landscape (2014-2015).
Assistant Professor of Watershed Hydrology at University of California at Riverside.
Dr. Joshua R. Wyrick
Waterfalls systematics (2005-2006)
Near-census analysis of river landforms and topogrpahic change processes (2009-2013)
Assistant Professor of Civil Engineering at York College of Pennsylvania
Dr. Beth Watson
Paleoenvironmental reconstruction in the Salinas River Estuary (2007-2009)
Associate Professor of Wetlands Science at Drexel University
Dr. Marco Maneta
Distributed hydrological modeling of present and future conditions based on different WRF dynamically downscaled GCM inputs.
Associate Professor of Watershed Hydrology at University of Montana.
Dr. Hamish Moir
Ecohydraulics of Chinook salmon adult spawning habitat (2003-2006)
Principal at CBEC, Inc.
Dr. Peng Gao
Suspended sediment processes in arid, irrigation-dominated drainages (2003-2005)
Professor of Physical Geography, Syracuse University, New York
Dr. Kendrick Brown
Paleoenvironmental reconstruction of floodplains at the river to tidal freshwater estuary interface (2000-2002)
Research Scientist at the Canadian Forest Service; Adjunct Professor at University of British Columbia Okanagan
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223 Veihmeyer Hall
LAWR Dept., UC Davis
One Shields Avenue
Davis, CA 95616
