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Christa is a Ph.D. Candidate at [http://www.asu.edu Arizona State Universities] new [http://schoolofsustainability.asu.edu/ School of Sustainability].  SOS is an experiment in interdisciplinary graduate education, seeking to bring together multiple disciplines in order to create practical solutions to the worlds most pressing environmental, economic, and social problems. Christa's dissertation research focuses on how water allocation institutions change in response to increasing scarcity.  She's using the desert southwest as a case study.  
I am a Ph.D candidate in the [http://schoolofsustainability.asu.edu/ School of Sustainability] at [http://www.asu.edu Arizona State University].  I have an MA from the [http://www.columbia.edu/cu/climatesociety/ Climate and Society] program at Columbia University, and a BS in civil engineering, also from Columbia.   My dissertation research focuses on how water allocation institutions have and may change in response to increasing scarcity. My main case study uses the water system in Las Vegas Nevada as an example of apparently successful adaptation to binding water scarcity.  Although we don't yet have tools to reliably predict human behavior, in this political context, the choices made by water policy decision makers have a governing influence on the system, and can't be ignoredI hope that  the computational tools used in complex systems research will help to integrate the rich social data I've gathered with the precise hydraulic models of the Colorado river water system that already exist.


 
lost my right leg in the Haiti earthquake in January 2010, and was a minor celebrity for a few months.  I continue to support the Haitian literacy program I had been working with, and run, bike, and rock climb in the rest of my spare time.
She recently finished the [http://www.columbia.edu/cu/climatesociety/ Climate and Society] masters degree at Columbia University, and has a BS in civil engineering, also from Columbia.
 
Christa lost her right leg in the Haiti earthquake in January 2010 but still continues to run, bike, and rock climb.

Revision as of 03:55, 30 May 2012

I am a Ph.D candidate in the School of Sustainability at Arizona State University. I have an MA from the Climate and Society program at Columbia University, and a BS in civil engineering, also from Columbia. My dissertation research focuses on how water allocation institutions have and may change in response to increasing scarcity. My main case study uses the water system in Las Vegas Nevada as an example of apparently successful adaptation to binding water scarcity. Although we don't yet have tools to reliably predict human behavior, in this political context, the choices made by water policy decision makers have a governing influence on the system, and can't be ignored. I hope that the computational tools used in complex systems research will help to integrate the rich social data I've gathered with the precise hydraulic models of the Colorado river water system that already exist.

I lost my right leg in the Haiti earthquake in January 2010, and was a minor celebrity for a few months. I continue to support the Haitian literacy program I had been working with, and run, bike, and rock climb in the rest of my spare time.