Onja Davidson Raoelison is a Ph.D. Candidate in Environmental Engineering at UCLA Samuel School of Engineering. She previously earned a joint M.Sc. in Civil and Environmental Engineering at UCLA and in Civil Engineering at ESTP Paris, France. She was born in Madagascar and moved to France when she was three years old.

Her passion for water is the reason that she has become part of the leadership for the Graduate Student Water Resources Group.  She hopes to have a meaningful career path by developing solutions for providing safe water for vulnerable communities. Her doctoral research focuses on mitigating the negative impacts of wildfires on surface water quality using green infrastructure. Her leadership positions in different organizations at UCLA center on advocating for diversity by improving the persistence of underrepresented minorities in STEM fields.

Manon (she/her) is a PhD Candidate in the Hydrology & Water Resources program at the UCLA Civil & Environmental Engineering department. Her research, supported by a NASA FINESST fellowship, centers around snow water resources in the context of improving our understanding and tools for better informed water management. She received her undergraduate degree from UC Berkeley (Environmental Science, Geography) in ‘15. She used to consult on water resources management as a scientist for the Stockholm Environment Institute. She is also a firm believer in supporting equity, diversity, and inclusion in STEM. In her spare time, she enjoys skiing, biking, and yoga. 

From the San Fernando Valley, Hayat Rasul (she/they) has an affection for all-things water. Hayat has an undergraduate degree in Geology at Dickinson College in Pennsylvania, specializing in hydrogeophysics and aquatics. After graduating in 2019, Hayat spent time in the world of citizen science at the Alliance for Aquatic Resource Monitoring, educating and engaging with volunteer monitors to develop scientific studies and collect water quality data on their local waterways. 

In 2021, having gained an interest in the rules humans place on water, Hayat returned home to pursue a Master’s Degree in the Urban and Regional Planning (MURP) program at UCLA’s Luskin School of Public Affairs. Her research, housed within the Luskin Center for Innovation Human Right to Water Lab, explores policies that manage water in California, particularly with how water agencies can prioritize solutions in and engage authentically with underserved communities.

Hayat is currently working on policy research for Local Integrated Regional Water Management (IRWM) programs, the Department of Water Resources’ Disadvantaged Community and Tribal Involvement Program, and the California State Water Resources Control Boards’ Safe and Affordable Funding for Equity and Resilience (SAFER) Drinking Water.

Outside of researching water professionally, Hayat is likely in water, rambling through tide pools in Malibu, or writing love poems to it.

Where was carbon stored within the deep ocean during the most recent ice age? What does this mean for the fate of the carbon humans are currently adding to our atmosphere? Can microbes survive in the deep Earth for millions of years at temperatures greater than we can sustain them in a laboratory? What does this mean for the origins of life on Earth and the potential for life on other planets? These are just a few of the fascinating questions I investigate as a Biogeochemical Oceanographer. 

Born in Hawaii, I grew up in the Salish Sea of Washington state where I fell in love with the ocean and natural world. In 2013, I completed two bachelors of science degrees from the University of Washington (UW), one in mechanical engineering and one in oceanography with a minor in climate science. During my three years at UW, I was able to spend four months at sea on oceanographic expeditions, completely confirming my love of the field and seagoing community. I continued my studies at the University of Rhode Island with the lab groups of Art Spivack and Rebecca Robinson. In 2020, I completed my PhD in Oceanography on the fate of atmospheric carbon in ancient oceans and the temperature and pressure limits of microbial life using techniques including porewater geochemistry and thermodynamic modeling.

Over the two years of my NSF-funded postdoctoral research fellowship at UCLA, I will assess how much of the carbon captured when rocks form at deep ocean methane seeps is released back into the water column over time due to biomediated corrosion.

After nearly a decade on the east coast, I am really looking forward to hiking the mountains of the west side and diving in my home waters once again. I’m incredibly excited to be a part of this community and look forward to collaborating with and getting to know y’all.

I am interested in how biodiversity evolves at phylogenetic and global spatial scales. My lab focuses on ray-finned fishes and seeks to understand the myriad forces that have shaped diversification of this lineage into the 33,000+ species found in aquatic ecosystems today. We combine genetic, genomic, and data science approaches to assemble and maintain the most comprehensive phylogeny for fishes and use this framework to understand how historical and contemporary forces impact the dynamics of speciation and extinction in the world’s oceans.

Dr. Shannon Speed is a tribal citizen of the Chickasaw Nation of Oklahoma. She is Director of the American Indian Studies Center (AISC) and Professor of Gender Studies and Anthropology at UCLA. She serves as a special advisor to Chancellor Gene Block on Native American and Indigenous affairs.

Dr. Speed has worked for the last two decades in Mexico and in the United States on issues of indigenous autonomy, sovereignty, gender, neoliberalism, violence, migration, social justice, and activist research. She has published numerous journal articles and book chapters in English and Spanish, and has published seven books and edited volumes, including her most recent, Incarcerated Stories: Indigenous Women Migrants and Violence in the Settler Capitalist State, which won the Best Subsequent Book Award of the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association in 2019 and a CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title award in 2020. She has a new co-edited volume entitled, Heightened States of Injustice: Activist Research on Indigenous Women and Violence (University of Arizona Press). Dr. Speed currently serves as the Past President of the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association (NAISA). In recent years, she was awarded the Chickasaw Dynamic Woman of the Year Award by the Chickasaw Nation, and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the State Bar of Texas Indian Law Section.

Julio Cesar Vega-Payne received his PhD in Classics from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 2022. As a Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellow with the Chicano Studies Research Center (CSRC) for 2022-2023, Julio will continue his research in the Classics department at UCLA on human-environment relationships in Homer, building on the work in his dissertation titled, “The Boy whom Hector called Scamandrius: The Natural World and Cosmic Time in the Iliad of Homer”.