UCOWR recognizes nine award categories: Warren A. Hall Medal, Early Career Award for Applied Research, Early Career Award for Extension/Outreach/Engagement, Mid-Career Award for Applied Research, Mid-Career Award for Extension/Outreach/Engagement, Friends of UCOWR, Education and Public Service Award, Ph.D. Dissertation Award, and JCWRE Paper of the Year. Recipients are nominated by UCOWR delegates and are recognized during the Awards Banquet at the Annual Conference. Awards may not be given if no nominations were submitted or a deserving recipient was not identified.
Click the links below to zoom to the current award recipients.
Congratulations to all awardees!
Warren A. Hall Medal Recipient
Early Career Award for Applied Research
Early Career Award for Extension/Outreach/Engagement
Mid-Career Award for Applied Research
Mid-Career Award for Extension/Outreach/Engagement
Education and Public Service Award
Ph.D. Dissertation Award Recipients
2024 Warren A. Hall Medal Recipient
Ximing Cai’s primary research area is water resources systems analysis, with a focus on coupled hydrology-human systems. He has been developing and applying systems approaches to various water resources management problems, including food-energy-water nexus, river basin management, reservoir operation, drought management, and interdependent infrastructure system planning. His work emphasizes interdisciplinary research by connecting hydrology and economics for environmental and water resources systems modeling. He has authored or co-authored over 200 peer reviewed journal papers, 3 books, and several monographs. He was elected to the 2019 class of fellows at the American Geophysical Union for forging a new science of hydrologic change accounting for human interaction and using it to advance water resources management. He is the recipient of 2023 American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) Julin Hinds Award. He has worked as consultant to the World Bank, United Nations, and other international agencies. Before joining the faculty of the University of Illinois in 2003, Professor Cai was Research Fellow at the International Food Policy Research (IFPRI) Institute (IFPRI) and International Water Management Institute (IWMI). He holds a B.S. in Water Resources Engineering (1990) and a M.S. in Hydrology and Water Resources (1994) from Tsinghua University, China, and Ph.D. in Civil Engineering (1999) from the University of Texas at Austin.
2024 Early Career Award for Applied Research
Dr. George Allen is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Geosciences at Virginia Tech. His research focuses on global-scale evaluations of Earth’s changing inland surface waters, particularly river and lake systems. He uses satellite observations, hydrologic models, and fieldwork to understand how Earth’s freshwater resources are changing. He has published more than 50 peer-review journal articles, including publications in Science, Nature, Nature Geoscience, and PNAS. He received an NSF CAREER Award in 2022 and a NASA Early Career Investigator Award in 2024. Dr. Allen received a B.S. in Geology from UC Davis in 2008 and a Ph.D. in Geological Sciences from UNC Chapel Hill in 2017, graduating with highest honors. He completed a 1-year postdoc at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory before joining the faculty at Texas A&M in the Department of Geography in 2018. In 2022, he joined the faculty of Virginia Tech.
2024 Early Career Award for Extension/Outreach/Engagement
Dr. David Warsinger is an Assistant Professor at Purdue University, affiliated with Mechanical Engineering and the Birck Nanotechnology Center and Herrick Labs. Dr. Warsinger’s research uses thermofluids and materials science for improving the performance and capabilities of sustainable membrane technologies. His applications include research for desalination, water treatment, water harvesting, and HVAC membranes. He completed his Ph.D. at MIT with John Lienhard, and was a PostDoc at Yale University with Menachem Elimelech. Dr. Warsinger is a coauthor of over 110 scientific contributions, comprising journal papers, conference papers, patents, and book chapters. He has won 5 international awards for young scientists, such as MIT Technology Review’s 35 innovators under 35, and receives over 1000 citations per year. He is also involved with commercializing his research through startup companies and industrial grants.
2024 Mid-Career Award for Applied Research
Dr. Vidya Samadi is an Assistant Professor and Director of the Hydrosystem and Hydroinformatics Research group in the Department of Agricultural Sciences at Clemson University. Her research focuses on leveraging advances in hydroinformatics and cyber-physical systems to address challenges associated with water resources modeling. Dr. Samadi’s research has been continuously supported by the National Science Foundation as well as by other agencies such as USDA, USGS, Savannah River National Lab, NOAA, and the Department of Transportation. She has authored/co‐authored more than 40 journal articles and 75 peer-reviewed conference proceedings. Before joining Clemson University in the spring of 2020, Dr. Samadi worked as a Research Associate and a Research Assistant Professor at the University of South Carolina and as a Postdoctoral Researcher in the School of Engineering at Cardiff University, United Kingdom. Dr. Samadi is a board member of the International Environmental Modelling & Software Society and Editor for Environmental Modeling & Software.
2024 Mid-Career Award for Extension/Outreach/Engagement
Dr. Jason R. Barrett is originally from Bobo, MS, a small farming community south of Clarksdale, MS. He now resides in Starkville, MS with his wife Shannon and four kids; Joe (18), Bronwynne (16), Betsy Gray (16), and Hudson (12). He began his Mississippi State University Extension career as a graduate assistant in the Food and Fiber Center. Dr. Barrett went on to work for the Agricultural Economics Department as an Extension Associate and furthered his career as an Extension Instructor and then an Assistant Extension Professor with the Center for Government and Community Development (GCD). Now, he is an Associate Extension Professor with the Mississippi Water Resources Research Institute where he specializes in public utilities (water and wastewater), private well education and screening, and leading the Mississippi Well Owner Network. Other research interests include the finance and economic development factors associated with water and waste water utilities.
2024 Friends of UCOWR Recipient
Dr. Karl W.J. Williard serves as Director of the School of Forestry and Horticulture and a Professor of Forest Hydrology at Southern Illinois University Carbondale (SIU). He received a B.A. in Biology from Lehigh University, an M.S. in Environmental Pollution Control from Penn State University, and a Ph.D. in Forest Hydrology from Penn State University. Dr. Williard teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in Watershed Management and Hydrology at SIU. He served as Executive Director for nine years for the Universities Council on Water Resources, a national professional water resources organization. He has secured over $14M in external grants from federal, state, and foundation sources to support his collaborative research program. His current research interests include agricultural land management impacts on soil and water quality and quantifying the water quality benefits of conservation practices including cover crops.
2024 Education and Public Service Award Recipient
The Texas Watershed Planning Program was developed by the Texas Water Resources Institute in 2006 with input from content experts around the US including federal and state agency staff, academics, and experts in the field of watershed planning with a goal of providing practical content to effectively teach practitioners the skills, knowledge and techniques needed to develop watershed-based plans. Since its inception the program has conducted 91 courses and counting, that have trained over 3,500 practitioners in watershed planning, water quality monitoring, data analysis, watershed based modeling, stakeholder facilitation, practice implementation and more. Program development was led by Kevin Wagner, now at Oklahoma State and Director of the Oklahoma Water Resources Center. Lucas Gregory, Associate Director of the Texas Water Resources Institute, currently leads the program and was a student of the first offering of the course in 2008.
2024 Ph.D. Dissertation Award Recipients
Natural Science & Engineering Category
Dr. Rebecca Kriss holds B.S. and M.S.E. degrees in Environmental Engineering from the Johns Hopkins University and a Ph.D. in Civil Engineering from Virginia Polytechnic and State University (Virginia Tech). She has performed research detecting and addressing organic, inorganic, and biological contaminants in drinking water, premise plumbing, and wastewater. As an ORISE fellow in EPA’s National Homeland Security Research Center, she investigated treatments for and fate of chemical and biological contaminants of concern in water and wastewater systems. Her dissertation work assessed onsite tests and developed residential and utility guidance to address lead and copper concerns from corrosion of premise plumbing. Dr. Kriss continues to help water systems address contamination concerns as a Physical Scientist at the US EPA Office of Water’s Water Infrastructure and Cyber Resilience Division where she works as a subject matter expert helping prepare for and respond to incidents.
Water Policy & Economics Category
Louis Sears earned his Ph.D. from the Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management in the SC Johnson School of Business at Cornell University in 2023. His training is in natural resource economics, with a focus on using dynamic optimization, game theory, and structural econometrics. His dissertation: “Management of Groundwater Resources in California: Opportunities for Collaboration and Competition Through Legal Institutions in a Spatial Dynamic Setting” examines the role that property rights institutions can play in promoting more efficient and sustainable use of groundwater resources in California. Previously he worked for the International Monetary Fund, where he contributed to research on expenditure policy and to measuring the fiscal and welfare impacts of socially inefficient energy pricing. His work has been published in peer-reviewed academic journals like World Development, Sustainability, Water Economics and Policy, and has been covered in popular media including by the New York Times and Nature.
JCWRE Paper of the Year 2024
“Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Justice in Water Dialogues: A review and Conceptualization” JCWRE 177. April 2023.
Authors: Simone A. Williams, Susanna Eden, Sharon B. Megdal, and Valerisa Joe-Gaddy
Simone A. Williams serves as a Graduate Research Associate at the University of Arizona Water Resources Research Center and is a Ph.D. Candidate in Arid Lands Resource Sciences. Her scholarly pursuits focus on water governance and management, particularly advancing groundwater vulnerability and risk assessment methodologies to inform robust, equitable policy frameworks and management strategies. With a Master of Earth and Environmental Resources Management degree from the University of South Carolina, Simone brings over two decades of professional expertise in natural resources management across diverse sectors, including governmental, corporate, and non-profit organizations. Committed to sustainable resource governance and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), she actively contributes to national and international initiatives to foster sustainable development and bolster the resilience of water resources and vulnerable communities.
