Prof. Li Li
Funded graduate PhD positions are available for Fall 2024 admission in Li reactive water group, Dept. Civil & Environmental Engineering at Penn State University, USA. We are looking for motivated students who are curious and interested in resolving the pressing water challenges that our society faces today. Our research questions focus broadly on understanding and predicting water quantity and quality response to a changing climate, including climate extremes (wildfire, droughts, and floods), and human perturbation (e.g., urbanization, agriculture). We have multiple collaborative projects focusing on these questions in US watersheds across gradients of climate, vegetation, geology, and human perturbations. These watersheds include, for example, Colorado high-elevation mountains (Como Creek and Niwot Ridge CO @LterNiwot, Coal Creek next to Crested Butte), Sagehen CA (@SagehenCreekFS), Jemez River NM (@CJCZO), Illilouette Creek Basin in Yosemite National Park CA (@YosemiteNPS), HJ Andrews Oregon (@HJA_Live), and Sleepers River VT. We use a combination of big data, process-based hydrology and reactive transport modeling for in-depth understanding of mechanisms in individual watersheds / rivers, and machine learning/deep learning tools for identifying trends and patterns at the regional to continental scales.
Students will work in interdisciplinary, collaborative, and diverse teams from multiple universities. Students are encouraged to work with collaborators. We often travel to field sites and collect data in the summer. Students are encouraged to skim through our most recent publications (2020-2023) on Google Scholar page to gather ideas about projects.
Qualifications
Students from various disciplines in Earth and Environmental Science, engineering, and related fields are invited to apply. We value computational, GIS, and/or statistics skills but these skills are not essential. What matters most is having a curious and open mind, along with a readiness to learn and grow. “Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.” – Carl Sagan, and “The most important thing is to never stop questioning.” – Neil deGrasse Tyson. We welcome applicants with diverse academic, ethical, and cultural backgrounds. I
Contact
Interested students are encouraged to contact Prof. Li Li (with resume and transcripts) via (lili@engr.psu.edu).
The application website is http://gradschool.psu.edu/apply/. Please feel free to apply directly to the Environmental Engineering program and mention Prof. Li as a potential advisor in your research statement. Review application materials will start in early January, 2024.
Publications
- Stewart et al., 2022. Streams as Mirrors: Reading Subsurface Water Chemistry From Stream Chemistry. https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2021WR029931
- Zhi et al., 2023. Widespread deoxygenation in warming rivers. Nature Climate Change. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-023-01793-3