People
Leah Bremer is an Associate Specialist with the University of Hawaiʻi Economic Research Organization (UHERO) and the Water Resources Research Center (WRRC). She also serves as Director of the UHERO Environmental Policy and Planning Group and is cooperating faculty with the Department of Geography and Environment, the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Management, and the Biocultural Initiative of the Pacific. She works collaboratively with interdisciplinary researchers, communities, and agencies on water and watershed management challenges and solutions in Hawaiʻi and Latin America. She holds a BA in Psychology from Northwestern University, an MS in Conservation Biology from Victoria University of Wellington (NZ-Aotearoa) and Macquarie University (Australia), and a PhD from the Joint Doctoral Program in Geography with San Diego State University and the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Christopher Shuler is currently an affiliate researcher at the Water Resources Research Center at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. He holds a PhD in Geology and Geophysics specializing in hydrology from University of Hawaii at Manoa, a B.S. in Environmental Science from the University of Oregon as well as a post-baccalaureate certification in Environmental Education from the University of Minnesota-Duluth. Christopher's current research is focused on ground and surface water resources in Hawaii and the American Samoa. His interests include numerical groundwater modeling, geo-chemical and isotopic aqueous chemistry, environmental water quality, and water sustainability studies. Christopher is an avid naturalist, outdoors person, and enjoys working in the field in both terrestrial and oceanic environments.
Ryan J. Longman works as an Oceania Research Fellow at the East-West Center in Honolulu and serves as an Affiliate faculty member at the University of Hawaii Water Resources Research Center. He received his Ph.D.from the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa and now works on various climate focused projects across the State of Hawaii and the USAPI. He is the co-PI on the Hawaii Climate Data Portal (HCDP) and Pacific Drought Knowledge Exchange (PDKE) Projects.
Keri Kodama is a Fellow at the East-West Center and affiliate faculty at the Water Resources Research Center at University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. She received her B.S. in Applied Math at Seattle University and her Ph.D. in Climate Dynamics from George Mason University. Her research interests range broadly from ocean-atmosphere interactions to the applications of data science and data management techniques for atmospheric variables. She currently works as a data scientist and climate researcher for the Hawaiʻi Climate Data Portal.
Jonghyun (Harry) Lee
WRRC & Civil and Environmental Engineering Associate Professor
Aurora Kagawa-Viviani is currently an assistant professor at the University of Hawaiʻi Water Resources Research Center and at the UHM Department of Geography and Environment. She earned her PhD in Geography from UH Mānoa focused on ecohydrology, and holds an MS Botany (UH Mānoa) with an Ecology, Evolution, and Conservation Biology specialization and an SB Environmental Engineering (MIT). Aurora’s research applies the lens of change to study interactions and feedbacks between communities (plant and human) and hydrologic processes. Her current research themes include ecohydrology of biotic invasion and ecological restoration and community-responsive water research supported through collaborations with social scientists exploring the intersection of socio-hydrology, hydrosocial paradigms, and participatory and Indigenous research. Dr. Kagawa-Viviani is excited to engage with the aspirations of local communities to drive rigorous and novel research in the transdisciplinary space encompassing plants, water, and people.
Matthew Widlansky is the associate director of the CIMAR-UH Sea Level Center and an affiliate researcher in the Oceanography department. He received a Ph.D. from the Georgia Institute of Technology in Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, with a focus on understanding climate variability in the tropical South Pacific. Matthew currently researches sea level variability on seasonal, interannual, and longer timescales. He uses global climate models of the ocean and atmosphere to assess the limits of predicting coastal impacts from sea level extremes.
Yinphan Tsang, PhD Yinphan Tsang is an Associate Professor in Natural Resources and Environmental Management in University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, and currently a Visiting Erskine Fellow in Civil and Natural Resources Engineering, University of Canterbury in New Zealand. She is trained as surface hydrologist with a great interest in understanding the island hydrology and linking hydrology with ecosystems using multidisciplinary approaches. She investigates hydrological processes and their implication in fluvial ecosystems. Her lab actively investigate five focus research topics – 1) Extreme weather and flood, including trends in extreme rainfall and streamflow and their association with antecedent conditions; 2)Hydrological modeling, applying WRF-Hydro, Next-Gen National Water Model, and SWAT model to management and extreme climate; 3) Watershed Assessment, including habitat assessment, using stream monitoring data to evaluate management impacts; 4) Aquatic Biodiversity, including investigation with traditional field survey and eDNA meta-data analyses; 5) Conservation Prioritization, including aquatic landscape analysis and education outreach.
Dr. Alison Nugent is currently an associate professor in the Atmospheric Sciences department and an affiliate researcher with the Water Resources Research Center. She holds a PhD in Geology & Geophysics from Yale University and a BS in Earth and Planetary Sciences from Harvard College. Her research interests focus around mountain meteorology and cloud microphysics, and include topics such as orographic convection and precipitation, and aerosol-cloud-precipitation interactions.
Sayed Bateni
Kevin Kodama is a Senior Service Hydrologist at the National Weather Service’s (NWS) Honolulu Forecast Office. He received a B.S. in Atmospheric Sciences from the University of Washington, and an M.S. in Meteorology from the University of Hawaiʻi. Kevin manages the hydrology program for the Pacific Region of the NWS.