Jorge "Santi" Santiago Ramírez Núñez, a second-year PhD student advised by Associate Professor Aditi Bhaskar, was selected for the W. Mark Harty Memorial Engineering Fellowship Fund. The fund awards fellowships to graduate students enrolled in the Department of Civil, Environmental and Architectural Engineering with a focus on water resources.
"Being selected for this fellowship encourages me as a member of the CU Boulder water resources community and motivates me to continue my research," Ramírez Núñez said.
Ramírez Núñez's research explores the impact of urban development on water resources, with part of his research addressing how urban development changes the streamflow regime in the Denver metro area. To achieve this, he and other researchers in the Bhaskar Research Group are monitoring streamflow in a watershed that will transition from rangeland to a developed site in Parker, Colorado. The group is also developing a predictive model to anticipate changes in streamflow while considering various watershed characteristics. The goal is to offer cities in the Denver metro area a valuable urban planning tool which would allow the cities to explore the potential effects of different future urban development scenarios on streamflow.
After completing his PhD, Ramirez Nunez plans to work in academia, continuing his involvement in citizen science and community outreach projects. He also plans to promote the implementation of green infrastructure in urban environments and the development of policies that support these initiatives.