UWRL welcomes four new faculty members

Alfonso hails from Peru but earned his MS and PhD right here at USU. His research and expertise include remote sensing data (unmanned aerial vehicles [UAVs] and satellites) production and analysis for agricultural water management, with emphasis on spatial crop status and water use estimation and monitoring, as well as water resources analysis at spatial and temporal scales. Recent research has focused on evapotranspiration, irrigation, remote sensing, soil moisture, and using high-resolution UAV and satellite imagery for studies and models at large and small scales. Alfonso oversees AggieAir analytics procedures and research for scientific and practical applications.

Tianfang started her engineering journey at Nanjing University in China, a journey that led her next to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and then on to a research position at Michigan State University. Her research centers on model-data fusion, combining process-based models with data-driven methods, to improve predictive capability and understanding of water resources systems, in particular, under human adaptations and global change. Recent projects include integrated modeling of surface and ground water, using remote sensing and machine learning for crop irrigation monitoring and yield prediction, and HPC-enabled uncertainty quantification for hydrologic models.

Ruije first studied hydraulic engineering at Tsinghua University in China, followed by two graduate degrees at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His research focuses on understanding watersheds as coupled nature-human systems, in particular how hydroclimatic processes change due to irrigation development at watershed and regional scales. He also works on water resources system analysis, with an emphasis on using data mining techniques to provide better decision-making support for water resources planning and management.