Philippe Vidon

Executive Director for the Division of Earth and Ecosystem Sciences

Philippe obtained his PhD in Geography from York University, ON, Canada in 2004, and subsequently occupied professor positions at Indiana University – Purdue University in Indianapolis (IUPUI) and at the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry a.k.a. ESF, in Syracuse, NY. There he served as Director of the Hydrological Systems Science Council, among other leadership appointments. His most recent research has focused on a broad range of topics including (but not limited to): watershed management, water quality, soil biogeochemistry (e.g., N, P, C, Hg cycling and soil N2O, CO2, and CH4 emissions), bioenergy, and the impact of beaver dam analogues on floodplain hydrogeomorphology and landscape resiliency.

Philipp Ruprecht

I am a faculty member in the Department of Geological Sciences and Engineering at University of Nevada, Reno, since 2016. Most of my research focuses on the magmatic processes within the crust and upper mantle that drive volcanic eruptions and the formation of continental crust. I combine field work with geochemical and petrologic tools, while also including physical constraints during magma evolution. In particular, I am interested in the assembly of arc magmas and the timescales associated with formation, storage, transport, and eruption of those magmas.
I am also interested in the links of magmatic processes to the formation of mineral deposits and the processes that are controlled by magmatic fluids.

Daniel Trugman

Dr. Trugman’s research focuses on developing and applying new techniques to analyze large datasets of seismic waveforms in order to better understand earthquake rupture processes and their relation to seismic hazards. His research team at the University is broadly interested in leveraging concepts from big data and scientific machine learning alongside high-fidelity physical modeling in order to advance earthquake science.

Topics of particular interest include to Dr. Trugman’s research team include:
– Nevada seismicity, tectonics, and earthquake sequences
– Earthquake source properties (magnitude, stress drop, and radiated energy estimates)
– Earthquake nucleation and rupture dynamics
– Stress transfer and earthquake triggering
– Earthquake early warning systems
– Ground motion prediction and hazard analysis
– Forensic seismology and nuclear monitoring

Elnaz Seylabi

I am an assistant professor in the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department at the University of Nevada Reno. Before joining UNR in 2019, I was a postdoctoral scholar at the Mechanical and Civil Engineering Department at the California Institute of Technology (2017-2019). I received a Ph.D. in Civil Engineering (with a major in Structural Mechanics and a minor in Applied Mathematics) from the University of California Los Angeles, an M.Sc. in Earthquake Engineering, and a B.Sc. in Civil Engineering from the Sharif University of Technology. My research focuses on risk-informed engineering of geostructural systems, near-surface characterization, and computational methods for efficient performance-based engineering and uncertainty quantification.

Derek Kauneckis

Dr. Derek Kauneckis is an affiliated associate research faculty in the Division of Earth and Ecosystem Sciences at the Desert Research Institute and associate professor of environmental studies at Ohio University. His research focuses on regional environmental governance, how people interact with environmental resources, and the emergence of cooperative institutions. He has examined behavioral and institutional components of resilience planning, climate policy networks, and the role of technology in the science/policy interface. His research has been published in the Journal of Coastal Management, Simulation & Gaming, Environmental Management, Studies in Comparative International Development, Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management, Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, among others. Dr. Kauneckis currently serves as an Advisory Committee Member for the Department of Homeland Security’s Resilient Investment Planning and Development Working Group, and leads the Advisory Group on Professional Education for the American Society of Adaptation Professionals (ASAP). Dr. Kauneckis’ research has been sponsored by Fulbright, National Science Foundation (NSF), National Oceans and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Department of Agriculture (USDA), Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL).

Lazaro Perez

My work seeks to identify and understand the coupling between physical heterogeneity and biochemical processes that control environmental biogeochemical reactions, energy, and mass transfer processes in the environment. We design and implement multiscale laboratory experiments visualization and numerical modeling.
My research is highly collaborative and multidisciplinary that provides domain expertise in scale biogeochemistry, reactive transport processes, multiphase flow systems, lab-to-field-scale hydrogeology, and computational geochemistry.

John Louie

Dr. John N. Louie, Professor at the Nevada Seismological Laboratory at the University of Nevada, Reno, has over forty years of university teaching and research experience in geophysics and seismology. He has published with students several well-cited papers on innovations in seismic imaging of earthquake faults in California, Nevada, and New Zealand. Over the last 25 years, Dr. Louie has developed a faster and more efficient site-assessment survey technique for earthquake-hazard evaluation, Refraction Microtremor. Research on this technology continues, measuring thousands of sites in California, Nevada, and New Zealand; and on using geological and geotechnical measurements to predict earthquake shaking from 3D wave physics, and improve communities’ resilience to disasters.

M. Rashed Khan

Khan Lab@UNR aims to study, design, and develop soft materials, unconventional processes, and reconfigurable micro/nanodevices that can be harnessed and optimized further for advanced biochemical, biomedical, and physicochemical applications. The lab is also keen to establish a multidisciplinary smart-manufacturing research group, including researchers from various backgrounds. Through short and long-term active collaboration, Khan Lab@UNR would like to address fundamental challenges associated with soft micro-device fabrication, 3D/4D (bio)printing, and patterning, advanced hybrid sensor manufacturing, biomedical device development – which are still unnoticed and under-explored, and need further investigation.

Additionally, our group also focuses on computational neuroscience and neurobioengineering. Under this research direction, we study human brain, brain functions, brain structure so that the established knowledge can be broadly applicable to general biomecical science and knowledge of the brain and brain-diseases.

Douglas Sims

Douglas Sims is Dean, School of Science, Engineering, and Mathematics at the College of Southern Nevada. He leads a school of more than 280 staff (FT and PT) serving 18000+ students. His focus is in sediments, geochemistry, environmental chemistry, and paleohydrology in the Southern Great Basin and Mojave Desert. Current projects are paleohydrology of desert playas, trace metals scavenging by rock varnish, surface water quality, and sediment migration and transport of trace metals in agricultural soils.

Beth Newingham

Dr. Newingham is a Research Ecologist with the USDA-Agricultural Research Service in Reno, NV, and adjunct faculty at UNR. Her research interests include plant community ecology, soil ecology, ecosystem ecology, fire ecology, restoration ecology, and climate change. She is particularly fascinated about linking plant and soil processes.