People
Faculty and Staff
Greg Characklis, PhD
Director
W. R. Kenan Jr. Distinguished Professor,
Environmental Sciences and Engineering
charack@email.unc.edu
Greg Characklis Site
Dr. Characklis serves as William R. Kenan, Jr. Distinguished Professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he holds appointments in both the Department of Environmental Sciences and Engineering and the UNC Institute for the Environment. His primary research interests involve developing solutions to water resource challenges through systems-based approaches that integrate consideration of both engineering and economic principles, with a particular focus on evaluating and managing environmental financial risk. Dr. Characklis is also Director of the Center on Financial Risk in Environmental Systems, an entity focused on translating environmental events (e.g., flood, drought) into financial outcomes, and one that bridges the Gillings School of Global Public Health and the UNC Institute for the Environment. The Center is currently engaged in projects funded by NSF, DOE, NIEHS and North Carolina state government to quantify the financial risks of hydrologic extremes in a number of economic sectors, including water utilities, power utilities, agriculture, inland navigation (e.g., Great Lakes) and real estate.
Dr. Characklis serves on the Editorial Board of Water Security, and has previously held editorial positions with the journals Water Resources Research and Hydrology and Earth System Sciences. In 2014 he was selected as a Fellow by the National Academy of Sciences’ Kavli Frontiers of Science, and in 2010 he was named an Aldo Leopold Leadership Fellow by Stanford University’s Woods Institute for the Environment.
Prior to joining UNC, Dr. Characklis spent two years as Director of Resource Development and Management at Azurix Corp. (a subsidiary of Enron Corp.). where his responsibilities centered around assessing the technical and financial merits of water supply development projects. Before entering the private sector, he spent two years in Washington, D.C. as a Fellow with the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine.
Dr. Characklis holds a Ph.D. and an M.S. in Environmental Science and Engineering from Rice University and a B.S. in Materials Science and Engineering from Johns Hopkins University.
Rachel Baum, PhD
Director of Industry Engagement
Dr. Baum works at the interface of academia and industry, bringing together her experiences in these two areas. She built her foundational knowledge and skills at UNC – Chapel Hill where she earned her BSPH, MSPH, and PhD. She worked with the Center on Financial Risk in Environmental Systems developing parametric insurance contracts to mitigate financial risks from hydrologic variability faced by water utilities across the United States. She honed her interdisciplinary research skills across natural sciences, business, economics, data science, engineering, and finance, as she characterized the financial risk associated with drought events for water utilities across the US and developed novel financial instruments to mitigate those risks.
Upon completing her PhD, she worked at Nephila Climate to apply her research at an insurance-linked fund dedicated to designing financial contracts to mitigate weather-related risk. She managed a portfolio of financial products designed to mitigate weather-related energy risk (including during the chaos of Winter Storm Uri).
Harrison Zeff, PhD
Director of Research
Before joining the Institute for Risk Management and Insurance Innovation, Harrison “HB” Zeff was a civil engineer with the Lower Colorado Basin Research and Modeling Team in the US Bureau of Reclamation where he worked to develop long-term, coordinated operations plans for some of the country’s largest reservoirs. This is his second stint working for the University of North Carolina, the first coming as a research scientist with the Center on Financial Risk in Environmental Systems. Prior to his time with Reclamation, he lived in California’s Tulare Basin, developing risk models for local groundwater banking operations. He has also spent time as a teaching fellow at Tubingen University, Germany and as a research fellow at the Property and Environment Research Center in Bozeman, Montana. He holds a PhD and an MSEE in environmental science and engineering from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and a BS in civil and environmental engineering from Pennsylvania State University.
Research Staff
Yash Amonkar, PhD
Postdoctoral Research Associate
amonkar@unc.edu
Projects
Dan Li, PhD
Postdoctoral Research Associate
danli@unc.edu
Projects
- Wildfire
- California
- Tampa Bay
Hunter Spitzer
Research Scientist
hunter@unc.edu
Project
Graduate Students
Iain Burnett, MS
Doctoral Student
Environmental Sciences and Engineering
iburnett@unc.edu
Project
Rosa Cuppari, MS
Doctoral Student
Environmental Sciences and Engineering
rcuppari@live.unc.edu
Project
François Daudelin
Doctoral Student
Environmental Sciences and Engineering
fradau@ad.unc.edu
François Daudelin LinkedIn page
Project
Kieran Fitzmaurice
Master’s student
Environmental Sciences and Engineering
kfitzmaurice@unc.edu
Kieran Fitzmaurice LinkedIn page
Project
Austin McCarthy Lord
Master’s Student
Environmental Sciences and Engineering
maclord@unc.edu
Project
McKinley Thompson
Master’s Student
Environmental Sciences and Engineering
mthom@unc.edu
Project
Undergraduate Students
Max Slesinski
Undergraduate Student
Mathematics
mslesins@unc.edu
Project
Youyou Zheng
Undergraduate Student
Applied Mathematics
yoyoz@unc.edu
Project
Recent Alumni
Simona Denaro, PhD
RED: Risk Engineering + Development, Milano Italy
Projects
Ben Foster, MS
Oliver Wyman, Raleigh, NC
Project
David Gorelick, PhD
MITRE Corp, Washington, DC
Projects
Andrew Hamilton, PhD
Confluency, Chapel Hill, NC
Project
Joy Hill, MS
Pacific Gas & Electric, San Francisco, CA
Project
Zachary Hirsch, MS
First Street Foundation, New York, NY
Project
Adam Hise, MS
Ascend Analytics, Boulder, CO
Projects
Eliot Meyer, PhD
Hazen and Sawyer, Lancaster, PA
Project
Corey Pahel-Short, MS
North Carolina Electric Cooperatives, Raleigh, NC
Corey Pahel-Short LinkedIn page
Project
Christina Petagna, MS
Environmental Policy Innovation Center, New Jersey
Christina Petagna LinkedIn page
Project
Yufei Su, PhD
S&P Global, Shanghai
Projects
Hope Thomson, MPH
Project Director, UNC Environmental Finance Center
Project
Group Alumni
Ms. Marta Andreoni, visiting M.S. student (Politecnico di Milano)
Ms. Laura Bellagamba, visiting M.S. student (Politecnico di Milano)
Mr. Casey Caldwell (M.S.E.E.), Hazen & Sawyer, Denver, CO
Dr. Adrienne Cizek (M.S.E.E.; Ph.D., NCSU),
Project Engineer at Stormwater Solutions Engineering, Wisconsin-Milwaukee
Dr. Mackenzie (Dilts) Boyer (M.S.E.E.; Ph.D., Florida), Faculty Associate, Arizona State University
Ms. Patricia Drummey-Stiegel (M.S.E.E.), Hazen & Sawyer, Raleigh, NC
Mr. Scott Durbin (M.S.E.E.), Sustainable Water Designs, Inc., San Francisco, CA
Mr. Josh Hunn (M.S.), Michael Baker Corp., Washington, D.C.
Ms. Kavya Kasturi (M.S.E.E.), ERG, Inc., Pittsburgh, PA
Dr. Jordan Kern (Ph.D./M.S.), Assistant Professor, North Carolina State University
Dr. Brian Kirsch (Ph.D./M.S.), Raftelis Financial Consultants, Inc., Denver, CO.
Dr. Leigh-Anne Krometis (Ph.D.), Associate Professor, Virginia Tech
Dr. Joseph Lobuglio, (Ph.D.), Dean of Engineering and Computer Science, North Carolina School of Science and Math
Mr. Reed Palmer (M.S.), Hazen & Sawyer, Raleigh, NC.
Ms. Jocelyn Ramsey (M.S.E.E.), Powel Group, Victoria, BC, Canada
Ms. Sarah Royster (M.S.), Cypress Creek Renewables, Santa Monica, CA
Mr. Steve Russo (M.S.E.E.), New York City Dept. of Education, New York, NY
Ms. Emma (Susick) Brinkley (M.S), IQVIA, Raleigh, NC
Ms. Andrea Traviglia (M.S.E.E.), USEPA, Boston, MA
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