Our Team: Biographies
Rachata Muneepeerakul
Principle Investigator
Associate Professor, Agricultural and Biological Engineering, University of Florida
rmuneepe@ufl.edu | 352-294-6729
Dr. Rachata Muneepeerakul is a complex systems modeler. He has studied systems ranging from freshwater fish communities, urban economies, and coupled natural- human systems. His expertise on network approaches, modeling coupled natural-human systems and modeling dispersal and evolutionary process in explicitly spatial settings has much to offer the development of theory for human migration.
Jeffrey Johnson
Professor, Anthropology, University of Florida
johnsonje@ufl.edu | 352-392-1020
Dr. Jeffrey Johnson work most related to this project focuses on network models of complex human and biological systems, and their integration, employing various applications of continuous-time Markov chain and exponential random graph models to the study of trophic dynamics in food webs, particularly as it relates to the interplay between food web dynamics and human behavioral networks. He has also worked on understanding the drivers of conflict, both within and between human groups
Rafael Muñoz-Carpena
Professor, Agricultural and Biological, University of Florida
carpena@ufl.edu | 352-294-6747
Dr. Rafael Muñoz-Carpena is an expert in uncertainty and global sensitivity analysis of complex models, especially complex hydrological and ecological models. His expertise in global sensitivity analysis will help determine the right level of complexity of the models.
Michael J. Puma
Director, Center for Climate Systems Research, Columbia University
Dr. Michael Puma's research is focused on global food security, especially understanding how susceptible the global network of food trade is to natural (e.g., megadroughts, volcanic eruptions) and man-made (e.g., wars, trade restrictions) disturbances using non-equilibrium, network-based economic models.
Upmanu Lall
Professor, Earth and Environmental, Columbia University
Dr. Upmanu Lall's research links climate extremes, water, food and energy in a systems modeling context. He brings expertise in Bayesian methods, systems modeling, machine learning and spatio-temporal modeling of extremes to the project.
David N. Griffith
Professor, Anthropology, East Carolina University
Dr. David Griffith has been studying migrant populations since 1981, including work on guest workers, undocumented economic migrants, and refugees fleeing civil war, natural disasters, and collapsing states and economies. His specific area of expertise related to this project is his work on the relationships among migration, environmental degradation, and economic development. His recent work has traced relationships between labor scarcity and deforestation in Honduras following migrants fleeing the devastation from Hurricane Mitch.
Justin Schon
Postdoctoral Associate, Anthropology, University of Florida
Justin Schon's research is focused on conflict-induced migration, especially the questions of whether, when, where, and how people migrate. Across all of his projects, he remains interested in how civilians, bureaucrats, and political elites obtain information and respond to uncertainty.
Paulina Concha
Researcher, Columbia Water Center, Columbia University
Paulina Concha is a researcher at the Columbia Water Center at Columbia University in New York, where she has worked under the direction of Prof. Upmanu Lall for the past five years. She obtained a B.S. in Chemistry from the ITESM in Monterrey, Mexico, and a M.S. degree in Environmental Engineering from Columbia University. She has worked on projects related to urban and rural water supply, water management and climate risk in agricultural supply chains, tailings dams risk, and the valuation of water in the mining industry.
Alison Heslin
Postdoctoral Research Scientist, Center for Climate Systems Research, Columbia University
Paulina Concha is a researcher at the Columbia Water Center at Columbia University in New York, where she has worked under the direction of Prof. Upmanu Lall for the past five years. She obtained a B.S. in Chemistry from the ITESM in Monterrey, Mexico, and a M.S. degree in Environmental Engineering from Columbia University. She has worked on projects related to urban and rural water supply, water management and climate risk in agricultural supply chains, tailings dams risk, and the valuation of water in the mining industry.
Gonzalo Suarez
Postdoctoral Associate, Agricultural and Biological Engineering, University of Florida
Gonzalo Suarez received his Ph.D. in Physics from the Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata in 2017. He spent five fruitful years as a Ph.D. student at IFIMAR (Instituto de Investigaciones Físicas de Mar del Plata) studying the diffusion of interacting particles in confined environments. He has gained experience working in DIMACS (Rutger University) modeling early anomaly detection algorithms in cybersecurity, and also modeling risk perception of vector-borne diseases at the University of Tennessee. Currently, he is developing a dynamical model of international human migration in the University of Florida Department of Agriculture and Biological Engineering.
Mehran Homayounfar
Ph.D. Student and Resesarch Assistant, Agricultural and Biological Engineering, University of Florida
Mehran Homayounfar's study deals with development and analysis of mathematical models for coupled natural-human systems, especially the question of how resilient these systems are to natural and man-made disturbances such as climate change and economic recession. He is deriving optimal policies that maximizes resiliency and increase sustainability of system. In the MURI migration project, he aims to develop dynamical modeling to capture feedbacks between migration and environmental changes and detect casualty in the system. He also obtained another PhD in water resources engineering from University of Malaya, Malaysia. He has experience on conflict resolution in water resources management and reservoir operation.
Woi Sok Oh
Ph.D. Student, Agricultural and Biological Engineering, University of Florida
Woi Sok Oh's research focuses on modeling complex systems, especially coupled natural-human systems, by connecting social theories and natural dynamics. He mainly uses dynamical system modeling and agent-based modeling to capture human-nature interactions. He will build and analyze an agent-based model with various agents and interactions to better understand migration processes in different social and natural settings.
Alvaro Carmona Cabrero
Ph.D. Student, Agricultural and Biological Engineering, University of Florida
Alvaro Carmona Cabrero has an MS degree in Environmental Hydraulics specialized in Hydrology. His previous studies focused on modeling soil erosion due to changes in land use by humans activities and wildfires with a mechanistic approach in field and landscape scales. On the MURI project, he is working on the sensitivity analysis of the models.
Genevieve Guerry
Ph.D. Student, Integrated Coastal Studies Program, East Carolina University
Genevieve received her MS in Coastal and Ocean Policy from The University of North Carolina Wilmington. She is an interdisciplinary marine scientist with a main focus on water resources. She is interested in public health in regards to drinking water in coastal communities. On the MURI project, she is working with Dr. David Griffith to look at the relationship between environmental degradation and migration.