CCEE Ph.D. student selected as 2021 New Frontiers Graduate Fellow

CCEE Ph.D. student Lucas Ford was selected as a 2021 New Frontiers Graduate Fellow at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois. Launched in 2013, the program provides each Fellow with a stipend, tuition allowance, an allocation on the powerful Blue Waters Project petascale computing system, and funds to support travel to related meetings and conferences.

Lucas Ford

During the fellowship, Lucas will conduct research on generalized reservoir operations to improve streamflow forecasting using land surface models over the continental United States.

“The goal of this work is to improve the representation of human impacts on the water cycle in climate models without adding much more complexity to those models, which can help engineers and scientists develop a better understanding of the impacts climate change may have on national and regional water systems,” says Lucas, whose research focuses on improving water and energy systems and studying potential climate impacts.  

Lucas will begin his year of research this fall and will share his findings at a conference in 2022 at the University of Illinois. “In addition to furthering my work on generalized reservoir operations, the opportunity to learn from the experts at the NCSA is truly exciting,” Lucas says.