Our Research Team
Meet the dedicated researchers, graduate students, and collaborators who drive our water science research forward. Each team member brings unique expertise and passion to our shared mission of understanding and protecting water resources.
Kim Van Meter, Ph.D.
Principal Investigator
Dr. Van Meter is an Associate Professor of Water System Science at Penn State whose research integrates ecohydrology, nutrient biogeochemistry, and data science to understand how human activity shapes water quality. She leads projects on nutrient legacies, wetland function, and next-generation modeling, and develops open datasets and tools used by agencies and researchers worldwide.
Expertise:
Fariha Ferdous
Graduate Researcher
Fariha is a graduate student working on machine-learning approaches to water-quality modeling, focusing on predicting stream temperature and nutrient dynamics from sparse monitoring data. Her interests include bridging process understanding with data-driven methods to improve water-quality forecasting in changing climates.
Expertise:
Elham Mahmoud Por
Graduate Researcher
Elham's work focuses on how reservoirs alter riverine nutrient dynamics and what that means for monitoring and modeling programs. She is developing new ways to diagnose and adapt trend models such as WRTDS for reservoir-influenced sites, quantifying nutrient retention and release, and building a national typology of reservoir impacts to improve water-quality forecasting and management.
Expertise:
Grace Tulinsky
Graduate Researcher
Grace is developing remote-sensing approaches to characterize wetland function at landscape scales. She contributes to data processing, mapping, and visualization for projects that link wetland condition to water-quality outcomes and supports the lab's open-data and outreach efforts.
Expertise:
Frankie
Director of Outreach and Communications
Frankie serves as our Director of Outreach and Communications, greeting visitors with enthusiasm, boosting team morale, and reminding us to keep our science clear and engaging. She's happiest exploring streams and wetlands alongside the lab.
Expertise:
Lab Alumni
We're proud of our former team members who have gone on to make significant contributions in water science, environmental research, and related fields.
Shuyu Chang
Former Graduate Student
Shuyu's graduate work in the lab focused on nutrient modeling and dataset development, including contributions to the gTREND-Nitrogen dataset, the IWAND dataset, and machine-learning approaches for predicting river geometry. She will be starting an Assistant Professor position at the University of Connecticut in Fall 2026.
Joseph Delesantro
Former Research Associate
Joseph is a watershed hydrologist with experience studying land-use practices and patterns to inform environmental management. In the Van Meter lab, Joseph was a postdoctoral fellow, working on a USDA-funded project to explore landscape-scale approaches to characterizing wetland function. Joseph is currently working as a watershed modeler an ORISE Fellow with the Chesapeake Bay Program/EPA.
Victor Schultz
Former Graduate Student
Victor led analyses of groundwater nitrogen accumulation in the Upper Mississippi River Basin and contributed to developing new diagnostic tools for quantifying legacy nutrient storage. Victor now works as an environmental scientist in the EPA's Chicago office.
Erich Ceisel
Former Graduate Student
In Erich's research for his M.S. degree, he quantified road-salt and chloride fluxes in the Chicago metropolitan area, laying the groundwork for the lab's "chloride legacy" studies. Erich currently works as a Regulatory Project Manager with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
Sam Cohen
Former Graduate Student
In Sam's graduate research, he examined water quality, streamflow, and environmental attributes in over 2,000 U.S. watersheds. He identified three distinct concentration–discharge patterns and showed how land use and pollution sources influence nutrient transport. Sam is currently working as an Environmental Scientist at the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Emma Cheriegate
Former Research Associate
Emma co-developed the Historical and Restorable Wetlands dataset for the Upper Mississippi River Basin and helped refine approaches for large-scale wetland functional assessment.
Join Our Research Team
We're always looking for passionate researchers to join our team. Whether you're interested in pursuing graduate studies or postdoctoral research, we welcome applications from dedicated individuals.