Meet the River Center
Principal Investigators
Emily Bernhardt
Enjoys tracking elements through ecosystems, the more degraded the better 
Ryan Emanuel
Studies water and its relationships to ecosystems and people |
Martin Doyle
Likes reading (and writing) the history of riverscapes 
Jim Heffernan
Obsessed with ecosystem change at all temporal scales |
Technical Staff
Brooke Hassett
River Center Lab Manager 
Adam Rok
Bernhardt lab manager |
Michael Vlah
Data Scientist |
Research Scientists & Post-Docs
Kevan Minick
Kiera O'Donnell
Kiera is a socio-ecologist who studies climate hazards. Her dissertation research focused on the landscape and social outcomes of Hurricane Irma in the low Florida Keys and Hurricane Michael in the Florida Panhandle. Here at Duke she is coordinating the Saltwater Intrusion and Sea Level Rise (SWISLR) Research Coordination Network (www.swislr.org). Her current research efforts are to synthesize our current understanding of SWISLR and share this knowledge with researchers, planners, and community members. |
Heili Lowman
Heili is an aquatic biogeochemist and ecosystem ecologist who explores ecosystem transformation and resilience with a particular focus on aquatic biogeochemistry at the terrestrial-aquatic interface and aquatic ecosystem responses to and memory of disturbance (e.g., floods, fires). |
PhD Students
Jocelyn Painter
Spencer Rhea
Spencer's work seeks to understand how saltwater intrusion and sea level rise affect carbon cycling in coastal wetlands and rivers. 
Skye-Anne Tschoepe
Skye-Anne studies the environmental justice implications of natural gas pipeline development in rural communities 
Shannon Plunkett
Shannon is deeply interested in metal contaminants in ecosystems and is currently working on the impacts of mercury contamination arising from both small scale and industrial gold mining on rivers and people in the Madre de Dios region of Peru and old and new mining frontiers in Ecuador.
Allison Pearce
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Jennie Bahramian
Ryan Parks
Ryan's research focuses on the factors influencing drinking water quality and watershed dynamics in Southeastern Madagascar.
Lizzy Weyl
Peter Wasswa
Peter is interested in reservoir optimization and operations under a changing climate across different climatological areas. Peter aims to explore reservoir operators’ behaviors under extreme weather events. 
Yuyang Wang
Yuyang is interested in plant species introduction in the context of globalization, focusing on the novel traits that determine their success in new regions. She also aims to explore the ecological impacts of these species on community structure and function, with particular interest in how climate change influences both the introduction process and the resulting ecological effects. Currently, She is studying these ideas in salt marsh ecosystems in North America and Asia, where the Asian reed Phragmites and North American cordgrass Spartina are competing to become the dominant species. |
MEM Students
Tullis Davis
Tullis is a Master of Environmental Management student interested in PFAS pollution, environmental justice, and human interactions with the environment! 
Jonathan Gilman
Jonathan is a Master of Environmental Management student interested in aquatic biology, biogeochemistry, and watershed management! |
Claire Pajka
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Undergraduate Researchers
Gabrielle Moreau
Gabrielle is majoring in geography and environmental policy, and her research interests span environmental justice and Indigenous involvement in climate policy. She is currently involved with research into salt water intrusion and sea level rise impacts on coastal communities, and transboundary allocation frameworks in tuna fisheries and the Colorado River Basin. |
Chibuike Okafor
Erin Chen
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This could be you... send an email to one or more PIs if you are interested in conducting undergraduate research with one or more of us...
