Meet the team
|
|
Dr. Björn Weeser co-leads the HydroCrowd project. With a background in environmental management and engineering, he has been leading and doing research in hydrogeochemical modelling combined with crowdsource (citizen science) measurements and geospatial data analysis. Additionally, he manages the SDGnexus Network, a global community of universities, research centers and stakeholders promoting the achievement of the SDGs within the framework of the DAAD “Higher Education Excellence in Development Cooperation – exceed ” program. He did his Bachelor in Environmental Protection in the Technische Hochschule Bingen, and his master in Environmental and Resource Management in the JLU. During this time, he also collaborate with the Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology and the Costa Rica University. He did his PhD studies at the JLU focusing in the modelling of hydrological fluxes of tropical mountainous watersheds in Kenya. Email: bjoern.weeser@envr.jlug.de |
|
Fabia Codalli is our field expert in Tanzania and the responsible for the project implementation at Mt. Kilimanjaro. She has an extensive experience in international projects focusing on river basin management, rural development projects, water and natural resources assessment. She is a tireless field worker, enjoy environmental data analysis and a very passionate about multidisciplinary projects that combine scientific research with society’s needs. She did her bachelor’s degree in environmental sciences at the University of Milan-Bicocca (Italy) and her MSc in Hydrology and Water Resources at the Institute for Water Education UNESCO-IHE, Delft (Netherlands). Currently she is a PhD candidate at Justus Liebig University Giessen (Germany). |
|
|
|
Fabian Mitze is our research associate and PhD student focused on the hydrological modelling component of the project. He has been working with hydrological modelling and extreme water events since his bachelor thesis, for which he calculated the groundwater recharge data for different time frames and areas with the support of GIS considering climate change scenarios. He did his internship analysing the flood disaster in the Ahr Valley in Germany in July 2021. He also has long expertise with Machine Learning and Deep Learning in remote-sensing-based segmentation techniques. He did his Environmental Management Bachelor's by the JLU and his master's studies in Physical Geography focused on Environmental Hydrology and Environmental Information Systems at the University of Marburg, and now he is back at the JLU to complete his PhD studies. |
|
Jazmin Campos Zeballos is our research associate in charge of the training of the data collection, the dissemination of the project, and the evaluation of the project. She did her bachelor's studies in Environmental Engineering at the Catholic University of Bolivia, a Master's in Integrated Water Resources Management at the TH Köln, Germany, and she is finishing her PhD analysing the relationship between water and energy under climate change scenarios at the Bonn University. She has been working analysing the risk of drought events of water-energy-land use systems in the Latin context using hydrological modelling as one of the main tools, and evaluating the vulnerability of the people depending on the system. She has a particular interest in hydrological modelling and risk analysis of extreme water events in tropical regions, the use of the results for climate change adaptation actions portfolios, and the research of alternative methods of data collection to improve and increase open data sources for hydrological modelling in the tropics. Email: jazmin.campos-zeballos@zeu.uni-giessen.de |
|
|
|
Jefferson is a research fellow at the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT , works on his Ph.D. in the context of HydroCrowd, and oversees the platform " Agua de Honduras ". He has over a decade of experience in spatially distributed hydrological modeling across Latin America and the Caribbean, and more recently he’s been working on identifying suitable water sources in projects addressing water management under freshwater-limited conditions. He studied Topographic Engineering at the Valle University, Colombia, with a specialization in Geographic Information Systems (GIS) at the University of Huelva, Spain, and a master’s degree in Geospatial Technologies at the University of Münster, Germany. Recently he did his Research Fellowship in hydrological modeling and agriculture through the Norman E. Borlaug International Agricultural Science and Technology Fellowship Program. His studies and work experience gave him a vast experience with spatial analysis, remote sensing, hydrological modeling, web application development, data science, and geostatistics, among others. Email: j.valencia@cgiar.org |
|
Dr. Suzanne Jacobs co-leads the HydroCrowd project. She is particularly interested in identifying suitable approaches for the successful engagement of stakeholders and citizen scientists and understanding people’s motivation to participate. Suzanne conducts the majority of her research in tropical regions. During her PhD, she studied hydrological and biogeochemical processes in catchments under contrasting land use Mau Forest Complex in Kenya. She is particularly interested in the relation between land use and the provisioning of water-related ecosystem services. Her experience lies in the use of field-based methods to understand hydro-biogeochemical processes, ranging from low-cost and citizen science-based methods to high-resolution data collection with in situ instruments. She currently applies these methods in research projects in Kenya and Tanzania, as well as Germany. Suzanne has a BSc in Environmental Sciences (Utrecht University, the Netherlands) and a MSc in Sustainable Forest and Nature Management (Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, Germany and Bangor University, UK). She did her PhD at JLU in collaboration with the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Institute of Meteorology and Climate Research, Atmospheric Environmental Research (KIT/IMK-IFU, Germany) and the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR, Kenya) and has been working as a research associate at the Centre for International Development and Environmental Research (ZEU) since 2017. |
|
