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Building Community and Skills at the Water Institute Student Showcase

On March 26, University of Florida faculty and students celebrated student research while fostering skill building, collaboration, and community across water-related disciplines. This dynamic, full-day event showed the interdisciplinary nature of water and how a strengthened community can lead to further innovation.

Unlike previous iterations of the Water Institute Student Showcase, this year’s event featured a two-part workshop co-led by Water Institute data manager Nicolas Fernandez alongside guest speakers Kimberlee Wong and Martin Seul from the Consortium of Universities for the Advancement of Hydrologic Science (CUAHSI). Titled, “Turn Your Data into Lasting Research Assets: Best Practices Concepts”, the workshop aimed to help students become more conscientious data stewards and better collaborators. Together, the presenters reviewed key principles and guidelines for data management and explored repositories for the long-term storage of water-related information, including CUAHSI’s own platform, HydroShare.

Throughout the workshop, networking lunch and student presentations, participants from departments across campus had the opportunity to connect and build new relationships. Six students representing five different departments shared their research, covering topics that ranged from remote sensing and coastal carbon dynamics to hydrologic modeling, soil moisture mapping, and water storage analysis. The diversity of these presentations highlighted the interdisciplinary strength of UF’s water research community and showcased the wide-ranging scientific work underway.

Thank you to our student speakers:

  • K. O. Irving, Microbiology and Cell Sciences, “Advanced Remote Sensing: Science and Sensors“
  • Amanda Chappel, ESSIE, “Coastal Carbon and Nutrients in Seagrass and Macroalgae Biomass“
  • Saba Shaghaghi Khajehdehi, Soil, Water, and Ecosystem Sciences, “Hydrologic Modeling of Surface Water Flow in the Peace River Basin in Florida“
  • Nikhil Deep, Soil, Water, and Ecosystem Sciences, “High Resolution Root Zone Soil Moisture Mapping Using a L-Band Radiometer over Sandy Soils in Florida“
  • Bewuket Tefera, Geography, “Predicting and Explaining GRACE-Derived Terrestrial Water Storage Anomalies in the Nile Basin and Sub-Basins Using CNN-LSTM“
  • Fabian Quichimbo, Geological Sciences, “Enhancing Breakthrough Curve Analysis via Automated Curve Fitting-Base Spectral Deconvolution“

The event culminated with an engaging seminar by Dr. Amanda Subalusky, 2025 Water Institute Early Career Faculty Fellow and Department of Biology faculty. Her talk, “Biological Connectivity as a Significant Nexus: How Animals Connect Freshwater and Terrestrial Ecosystems“, invited participants into her research journey, highlighting the ecological processes that link freshwater and terrestrial systems. By emphasizing biological connectivity within and across ecosystems, Dr. Subalusky offered insights that inspired interdisciplinary research, collaboration, and scientific exchange.

The Water Institute extends its gratitude to all the participants of the Water Institute Spring Student Showcase.

 

To access a recording of Dr. Subalusky’s seminar, please reach out to Sarah Marc, sarahmarc@ufl.edu.

March 31, 2026