Almeida Lab at UTRGV
The Almeida Lab is housed in the School of Earth, Environmental, and Marine Sciences at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. We tackle multiple sustainability dimensions of water, energy, and food systems—both independently and jointly. Greenhouse gas footprints and environmental change are common threads in our work. Our methods combine diverse approaches, including ecological fieldwork, data science, statistical modeling, greenhouse gas and hydrological analysis, and GIS. We gain insights from analysis at local to global scales—from aquatic and agricultural ecosystems in South Texas to rivers and floodplains in the Amazon basin. Read more about some of our focal themes of research here.
**We are hiring 2 M.S. students to start in the Fall 2023. The student will be enrolled in either the M.S. program in Agriculture, Environmental Science & Sustainability or Ocean, Coastal & Earth Sciences at UTRGV. Get in touch if you are interested in any of our areas of research.
Assistant Professor
School of Earth, Environmental, and Marine Sciences The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, Edinburg, TX, United States [email protected] p. +1 (956) 665-5280 |
Lab PI: Rafael M. Almeida, Ph.D.
Rafael was broadly trained as an aquatic ecologist. During his PhD, he investigated the effects of climate change and hydropower dams on aquatic biogeochemistry and hydrology. Rafael’s research became broader in scope during his time as an Atkinson Postdoctoral Fellow in Sustainability at Cornell University, moving from focused analysis on individual aquatic ecosystems to basin-wide approaches for sustainable hydropower planning. His innovative work was recognized through a 2021 Hynes Award for New Investigators, bestowed by the Society for Freshwater Science. Rafael’s experience with hydropower in the early years of his academic trajectory fueled his broad current interest in food-energy-water sustainability. Working with managed aquatic ecosystems introduced him to aquaculture, which is now leading him to think about food systems sustainability broadly. Similarly, hydropower connected him to energy systems, and he is now widely interested in social-ecological dimensions of renewable energy sources. Rafael identifies himself as an ecosystem and sustainability scientist focused on tackling contemporary environmental issues at the water-energy-food nexus. |
cv-rafael-almeida-apr2022.pdf | |
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