Our Team

Alexander (Sam) Fernald

Data-driven Water Budgets and Community Accessible Decision Tools; Project Management; Water Manager Certification Program; Water Technician Training; Western Water Network
Role/category: Principle Investigator
Expertise: Coupled human and hydrologic systems; water quality hydrology; land use effects on infiltration, runoff, sediment yield, and nonpoint source pollution; and effects of surface water/groundwater exchange on water availability and water quality

Alexander “Sam” G. Fernald directs the New Mexico Water Resources Research Institute (NM WRRI). As director, he leads the Institute in its mission to develop and disseminate knowledge that will assist the state, region, and nation in solving water resources problems. Dr. Fernald also chairs the Water Science and Management Graduate degree program, where he establishes, initiates, and leads all academic, programmatic, budgetary, administrative, and instructional aspects of the program. Additionally, he is a professor of Watershed Management at the Department of Animal and Range Sciences at New Mexico State University.

Robert Sabie

Agricultural Systems; Project Management
Role/category: Coordinato

Carolina Mijares

Project Management

Barbara Chamberlin

Extension Animation and Videos; Interactive Water Management Game
Role/category: Co-PI
Area(s) of Expertise: Educational technology and development of learning media.

Barbara Chamberlin directs the Innovative Media Research and Extension department, including developers of games, videos, animations and communication through web and social media. Her PhD is in Educational Technology, with research emphases in media development, user testing, and models for instructional design.

Omololu "John" Idowu

Agricultural Systems
Role/category: Co-PI
Area(s) of Expertise: Educational technology and development of learning media.Soil Health

Dr. Idowu is a professor and Extension Agronomist at New Mexico State University. His work encompasses a holistic approach to soil and crop management to improve soil health, enhance crop production, and protect the environment. His efforts aim to increase soil organic matter to make soils in arid and semiarid regions more resilient to weather variability and recurrent droughts, including conducting research on various soil health practices and disseminating information to producers and stakeholders. He has also investigated the agronomic optimization of field crops such as cotton, corn, alfalfa, pinto beans, and guar, through reduced tillage practices, fertilization, and irrigation water management. He is establishing a long-term soil health site at the Leyendecker Plant Science Center in Las Cruces, New Mexico, to train farmers and agricultural professionals on practices that can improve soil health, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, sequester carbon, enhance the moisture-holding capacity of soil, and lessen the frequency of field irrigation. He earned his master's degree in Agronomy from the University of Gottingen in Germany and his doctorate in Land Management from Cranfield University in England. 

Kendra Kaiser

Conservation Readiness Assessment; Ethnographic Community Assessment; Water Systems
Role/category: Co-PI
Area(s) of Expertise: Watershed hydrology

Kendra Kaiser is the Director of the Idaho Water Resources Research Institute and Assistant Professor in the Soil and Water Systems Department at the University of Idaho. She is a watershed hydrologist that creates actionable research with stakeholders across sectors, with a focus on agricultural water use and management. She develops dynamic open-source data visualizations, tools, and resources that facilitate decision-making using a wide range of data products and methods.

Jay Lillywhite

Regional Economic Modeling
Role/category: Co-PI
Area(s) of Expertise: Agricultural Economics, Agribusiness Management, Economic & Financial Analyses

Jay Lillywhite is the Associate Dean for Research in New Mexico State University's College of Agricultural, Consumer, and Environmental Sciences. He serves as the Director of the Agricultural Experiment Station. He is an applied economist by trade and focuses on economic and financial analyses of agricultural businesses.

Rachel Boren

Project Management
Role/category: Assisting staff/personnel
Area(s) of Expertise: Program Evaluation, Technical Writing, Data Collection and Analysis

Rachel Boren earned her Ph.D. in Educational Research, Statistics, and Evaluation from the University of Virginia, where she was trained in program evaluation and research methods in education and the social sciences. She has a diverse portfolio of training and experience with program evaluation and research in education and healthcare, most recently as an evaluator for the Provost’s Office at the University of Texas at El Paso and the Director of Evaluation for a 70 million-dollar National Institutes of Health funded center based at the University of Washington. She has experience assessing student learning and other outcomes for K-12 and higher education populations, including both two and four- year college environments all over the country, and ensuring programs have strong evaluation plans and the necessary data for evidence based decision-making.

Alejandro Andrade Rodriguez

Agricultural Systems

Ryan Burns

Agricultural Systems

Anushka Perera

Agricultural Systems

Juan Solomon

Agricultural Systems

Richard Heerema

Salim Bawazir

Agricultural Systems; Water Manager Certification Program; Water Technician Training

Connie Maxwell

Conservation Readiness Assessment
Role/category: Key/Senior Personnel
Area(s) of Expertise: Community and watershed-based planning

Connie Maxwell is an ecological planner and water scientist that works with communities on local and regional levels. At New Mexico Water Resources Research Institute, most recently, she has been working with communities in regions around New Mexico on watershed restoration and long-term planning frameworks that can mitigate climate challenges, including with the South Central NM Stormwater Management Coalition and the New Mexico Acequia Association. Maxwell received her doctorate from NMSU in Water Science and Management, a Master’s degree from UNM in Community and Regional Planning with a concentration in Natural Resources, and a bachelor’s in English and Architecture from Columbia University. Maxwell co-founded the non-profit, the Alamosa Land Institute (ALI), in 2010 to engage in ecological planning and restoration with farmers and ranchers, and has been collaboratively introducing and testing innovative land management practices.

Paige Ramsey

Conservation Readiness Assessment

Paige Ramsey is a Program Specialist with the USDA Agricultural Research Service based at the Jornada Experimental Range in Las Cruces, NM. She holds a BS in Geography from New Mexico State University and a MS in Geographic Information Science from the University of Denver. Her research interests include land use and climate change impacts on rangelands and agricultural communities in the Southwestern United States. She specializes in spatial analysis and GIS, science synthesis, and outreach. Paige has worked on a number of projects with USDA-ARS, including a five-year NIFA funded coordinated agricultural project focusing on sustainable beef production in the Southwestern United States.

Noah Silber-Coats

Conservation Readiness Assessment
Role/category: Assisting staff/personnel
Area(s) of Expertise: Water policy; Alternative crops; Science translation; Geography

Noah Silber-Coats has been with the Southwest Climate Hub since 2022, where he leads development of the Water Adaptation Techniques Atlas (WATA). This tool documents practices for adapting to water scarcity and related issues across the region. In his role in RAWCS he will be working with stakeholders to identify and implement appropriate practices to respond to water challenges. He is trained as a human-environment geographer with MA and PhD from the University of Arizona, and is based in Tucson.

Caiti Steele

David Dubois

Conservation Readiness Assessment; Data-driven Water Budgets and Community Accessible Decision Tools
Role/category: Key/Senior Personnel
Area(s) of Expertise: climate;climate change;weather data

Dave DuBois is the State Climatologist and Associate College Professor at New Mexico State University. Dave chairs the New Mexico Drought Monitoring Workgroup for the Governor’s Drought Task Force and directs the New Mexico Climate Center. He also oversees the ZiaMet mesonet, a network of 200 automated surface weather stations throughout the state. Dave is a native New Mexican but grew up on a farm in southern New Jersey. He has over 30 years of experience working in the field and holds a PhD in Atmospheric Sciences from the University of Nevada Reno.

Sujay Kumar

Upmanu Lall

Data-driven Water Budgets and Community Accessible Decision Tools
Role/category: Other
Area(s) of Expertise: Hydrology, Climate, Systems Analysis

Upmanu Lall is an Indian American engineer and the founding director of the Water Institute at the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory at Arizona State University in Tempe. He also has a faculty appointment as professor in the School of Complex Adaptive Systems within the College of Global Futures. Prior to joining ASU in January 2024, Lall was the Alan and Carol Silberstein Professor of Engineering at Columbia University in Manhattan, New York. He served as founding director of the Columbia Water Center. He studies how to solve water scarcity and how to predict and mitigate floods. In 2014, he was awarded the Henry Darcy Medal by the European Geosciences Union.[1] He was named an American Geophysical Union Fellow in 2017 and their Walter Langbein Lecturer in 2022. He was elected a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2018, and has received the Arid Lands Hydrology and the Ven Te Chow Awards from the American Society of Civil Engineers. In April 2021 he was named to the “Hot List of the world’s 1,000 top climate scientists” by Reuters

Kim A. Locke

Data-driven Water Budgets and Community Accessible Decision Tool
Role/category: Assisting staff/personnel
Area(s) of Expertise: Water availability data product co-development; stakeholder engagement, partnerships

Kim is a Senior Research Scientist with NASA Goddard's Hydrological Sciences Laboratory, leading collaborations and engagement efforts for the NASA Water Insight project, including the NLDAS-3 and NASA HydroGlobe water, land and agriculture integrated remote sensing and modeling systems. Kim facilitates the use of Earth observations for more sustainable agriculture, water resources and land management by connecting NASA data experts with decision makers and data users. Kim also supports engagement and data product co-development with NOAA National Integrated Drought Information System (NIDIS), UNL's National Drought Mitigation Center, U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Microsoft, the Gates Foundation, and other public- and private-sector partners

Jorge Preciado

Data-driven Water Budgets and Community Accessible Decision Tools

Holly Brause

Ethnographic Community Assessment
Role/category: Co-PI
Area(s) of Expertise: Cultural Anthropology, Environmental Anthropology, Qualitative Data Collection and Analysis

Dr. Holly Brause is a cultural anthropologist specializing in environmental anthropology, transboundary water resources, climate change and natural resource management, food and agriculture, and the politics and practices of future-making. Her geographical focuses are the US Southwest, the US/Mexico border, New Mexico, Mexico, and Latin America. Brause has extensive experience working in collaborative, multidisciplinary research teams, and integrating stakeholders and community expertise into scientific efforts.

Staci K. Emm

Ethnographic Community Assessment; Tribal Involvement; Water Systems

Jeffrey Buras

Extension Animation and Videos
Role/category: Assisting staff/personnel
Area(s) of Expertise: Communications

Jeffrey Buras helps spread messages through social media and supports extension offices with their outreach. Originally from Houston, Jeffrey also spent a decade in the media industry in Austin and Washington DC. Jeffrey received a bachelor’s degree in Communications from American University and a certificate in Agroecology from the University of the District of Columbia, as well as community garden leadership training from the Sustainable Food Center.

Tomilee Turner

Extension Animation and Videos
Role/category: Assisting staff/personnel
Area(s) of Expertise: Video production

Tomilee Turner manages IMRE's video unit and specializes in producing educational featurettes tailored for each project's target audience. She has over 30 years experience working with experts in a wide range of agricultural disciplines. Delivering their messages using creative, quality video and audio is her goal

Amy Muise

Extension Animation and Videos; Interactive Water Management Game
Role/category: Key/Senior Personnel
Area(s) of Expertise: Educational games, social media, digital media

Amy Smith Muise is an instructional designer in the Learning Games Lab, Department of Innovative Media, Research & Extension, New Mexico State University. She focuses on crafting and distributing educational outreach content via engaging multimedia, to reach audiences in Extension, STEM education, and agricultural production/ processing environments.

Anik Alvi

Facilitated Technical Support; Project Management
Role/category: Assisting staff/personnel
Area(s) of Expertise: Technical Data Support

Data-driven professional with strong expertise in data analysis, machine learning, and software development. Have good knowledge in Python and SQL Programming Languages and also skilled in Cloud Computing with a strong foundation in Big Data Engineering and Predictive Modeling. A quick learner with ability to absorb new ideas as well as communicate clearly and effectively both orally and in writing within a team environment or an individual basis.

Hamid Balali

Integrated System-based Modeling
Role/category: Key/Senior Personnel
Area(s) of Expertise: System Dynamics Modelling

Frank Ward

Regional Economic Modeling

Hope Allen

Tribal Involvement
Role/category: Assisting staff/personnel
Area(s) of Expertise: Community engagement, youth development, data collection and Indigenous research methodologies, and language and cultural revitalization.

Hope Allen is a citizen of the Yerington Paiute Tribe with Walker River Paiute relatives. She is a recent pre-law graduate from the University of Nevada, Reno with a Bachelor's degree in Gender, Race and Identity and minors in Cultural Anthropology and Indigenous Studies. She previously worked for the University of Nevada’s Extension program in Mineral County for several years as a Community-Based worker where she assisted with data collection and program success for 4-H sports, Veggies for Kids and Veggies for Seniors, Think First, Stay Safe, the community garden, hoop house construction and grant writing and editing. Her goal for soo Agai Dicutta (the Walker River) program is to work with the community to meet their needs through current and new programs to promote opportunity, access and connection for Agai Dicutta numudooe (Walker River relatives)

Dan Coen

Tribal Involvement

Eusebio Ingol-Blanco

Water Manager Certification Program; Water Technician Training

Huidae Cho

Water Systems

Madan Pokhre

Water Systems
Role/category: Graduate Student
Area(s) of Expertise: Hydrologic modeling, water resources engineering

Madan Pokhrel is a PhD student in the Department of Civil Engineering at New Mexico State University with experience in Water Resources Engineering. He is working in the Computational Lab for Advanced Water Resources Informatics and Modelling (CLAWRIM). His areas of interest include hydrological modeling, the application of remote sensing in hydrology, and optimization.

Ginger Paige

Water Systems; Western Water Network
Role/category: Key/Senior Personnel
Area(s) of Expertise: Watershed hydrology and water budgets

Ginger Paige is a Professor of Water Resources and Water Resource Extension Specialist, in the Department of Ecosystem Science and Management at the University of Wyoming. Ginger is a watershed hydrologist with expertise in measurement and modeling of hydrologic processes. She works with agencies, watershed groups, tribes and individuals across the state and region to improve water resource monitoring, management and assessment.

Reanna Burnett

Water Technician Training

Robert Heinse

Western Water Network
Role/category: Key/Senior Personnel
Area(s) of Expertise: Water Resources, Soil Science

Robert Heinse is Professor of Soil and Environmental Physics in the Soil and Water Systems Department at the University of Idaho. His research interests revolve around water in the soil environment and the characterization using geophysical methods. He is a past director of the interdisciplinary water resources program. Above all, however, he has a growing appreciation for the complexities of human and ecosystem interactions with the physical world.

Bret Hess

Western Water Network

Emily Kambalame

Regional Economic Modelin
Role/category: Graduate Student
Area(s) of Expertise: Hydroeconomics modeling, Optimisation, Water Policy, Resource Economics, Water Engineering, and Irrigation

Emily Kambalame is a PhD scholar in Water Science and Management (Economics and Policy) at New Mexico State University, with an MSc in Water Engineering and a BSc in Irrigation Engineering. Her research focuses on hydroeconomic modeling, integrating hydrology and economics to develop strategies for equitable and efficient water allocation. By bridging technical expertise with policy insight, she seeks to transform water management into sustainable solutions that address scarcity, competing demands, and long-term resource security..