General Inquiries:
Faculty
Tammo Steenhuis
Brian Richards
Todd Walter
Professor Tammo Steenhuis received a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin, Madison in 1978. In addition to his duties with the Soil & Water Lab, Tammo serves as an Adjunct Professor at the University of Bahir Dar in Ethiopia and is a fellow of the American Geophysical Union. His research has ranged from soil colloid movement to basin-wide movement of water and constituents. Recently, Tammo has been interested in landscape processes in the northeastern US, Ethiopia, and China. He cooperates on research in sustainable agricultural practices, self-organization distributed hydrological processes, pesticide movement, and gully formation/prevention.
Brian Richards’ research focuses on the interaction of soil, water, and a wide range of substances – including trace elements, nutrients, pesticides, colloids – which in the wrong place and/or at deleterious concentrations are regarded as contaminants. Recent major research directions include the impacts of agricultural and perennial bioenergy cropping systems on soils and soil emissions
Professor Todd Walter’s research emphasis is on the interactions between hydrology, ecology, and biogeochemistry. He applies physical hydrology and water resources engineering to a broad range of multidisciplinary research interests and pursues questions that cross the traditional academic boundaries of hydrology and terrestrial ecology.
Jean-Yves Parlange
Selamawit Amare
Professor Emeritus
Jean-Yves earned his engineering degree from the Ecole Nationale Supérieure de l’Aéronautique in 1958 and completed his Ph.D. at Brown University in 1962. Although trained in aeronautical engineering, he applied his mathematical expertise to make significant contributions in agriculture and hydrology. In 1985, he joined Cornell University as a Professor, collaborating on projects related to finger flow. He continued on to research mathematical modeling of chemical movement in porous media, hydrology, watershed modeling, sediment transport, and erosion. Throughout his career, he mentored many graduate students and valued the evolution of the BEE department, emphasizing the importance of a strong mathematical foundation.
Selamawit Amare holds a Bachelor of Science in Soil and Water Resources Management from Wollo University and a Master of Science in Engineering Hydrology from Bahir Dar University in Ethiopia. In 2022, she earned her PhD from the Soil Physics and Land Management Group at Wageningen University & Research in the Netherlands. Prior to joining Cornell University, Selamawit was a full-time Assistant Professor of Hydrology at Bahir Dar University. Moreover, she is working as a natural resources management and watershed consultant at the World Bank Ethiopia country office. Currently, she is a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Biological and Environmental Engineering at Cornell University. Her research focuses on investigating the impact of sustainable land management practices on soil organic carbon, drawing on experiences from Ethiopia.
Post Docs
Naaran Brindt
coming soon ⏳
Graduate Students
Xin Shen
Xingliang Cao
Xiyue Luo
Support Staff
Steve Pacenka
Ani Schatz
Isaiah Guenther
coming soon ⏳
Isaiah received a B.S. in Biological Engineering from Cornell University in 2024, and began working with the Soil & Water Lab in 2022 as an undergraduate student. His main contributions have been machine learning analysis for pesticide leaching, field operations for groundwater monitoring, and website design.
Alumni
