Tuesday Plenary: Environmental Justice from a Federal Perspective
Speaker: Sudhir Raj Shrestha
Technical Manager
NWS Office of Water Prediction (OWP) Web and Data Services (WDS)
Sudhir Raj Shrestha is currently serving as the Technical Manager for NWS OWP Web and Data Services program. In this role, he provides key support and leadership for the development and deployment of the Office of Water Prediction Web and Data services presence, including solutions on web and geospatial dissemination services in cloud and on-premise infrastructure to support the NWS Water Resources Program. He also provides key technical support for the Hydrologic Visualization and Inundation Services (HydroVIS) project involving cloud deployment of National Water Model (NWM) and River Forecast Center (RFC) forecast visualizations, including inundation geospatial mapping services and their dissemination via National Water Prediction Service (NWPS). As a part of the web/dissemination effort, he represents, collaborates, and creates strong stakeholder relationships with national, regional, and local partners in planning, deployment, and maintenance of national data dissemination and services. He also works with Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), The White House to support an interagency effort on the Year of Open Science as a co-chair. He strives to make science and scientific information reachable to a larger community via American Geophysical Union (AGU), Eos magazine where he serves as Science Advisor for Informatics and guest editor for the Journal of Remote Sensing. He believes, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion is one of the important components of our work and life and Asian immigrants play an important role in government including NOAA. To foster the goal of DEIA, he actively participates in DEIA efforts and serves a co-chair for American Geophysical Union (AGU) Informatics DEI, co-chair of NWS Diversity Management Council (DMC), including serving as Executive committee member of the NOAA AAPI Employee Resource Group.
As an earth scientist, he strives to make geospatial earth science data open, easy to use with added value to large users with emphasis on the science community promoting Open Science. For more information: https://www.weather.gov/careers/physical-science-sudhir-raj-shrestha
Speaker: Sally Gutierrez
United States Environmental Protection Agency (Retired)
Cincinnati, Ohio
Sally Gutierrez completed her service to the United States Environmental Protection Agency’s (USEPA), Office of Research and Development at the end of December, 2023. Prior to her completion of her almost 24 years of service, she was a Senior Advisor for Water in the Center for Environmental Solutions and Emergency Response in Cincinnati, Ohio. In her position of Senior Advisor, she assisted in the development of wastewater-based disease surveillance practices and also served as technical advisor on issues related to perfluorinated chemicals in water and advancement of diversity, equity and inclusion. She held the distinction of being the first Hispanic female member of the career Senior Executive Service at USEPA. Over the last three years, she served as the team lead for diversity and inclusion in the Ohio River Basin restoration plan. From January, 2023 to July, 2023, she served as the Acting Director of the Groundwater and Ecosystems Restoration Division in Ada, Oklahoma and from 2018 to mid-2000, she served as the Acting Director of the Water Permits Division in the Office of Water in Washington, DC. She has also served as Director, of the National Risk Management Laboratory and Director, of the Water Supply and Water Resources Division. Prior to coming to USEPA, she was responsible for leading water and air programs for the Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission. She is continuing to serve the water industry.
Moderator: Lilit Yeghiazarian
Professor of Chemical and Environmental Engineering
University of Cincinnati
Dr. Yeghiazarian is a Professor of Chemical and Environmental Engineering at the University of Cincinnati. She holds a B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from the Yerevan Polytechnic Institute, and M.S. in Industrial Engineering from the American University of Armenia. Dr. Yeghiazarian obtained her Ph.D. from Cornell University’s Department of Biological and Environmental Engineering for her work on contaminant fate and transport in complex environmental systems.
Her research portfolio covers a wide range of topics including urban infrastructure and flooding, complex systems and sustainability, network science, data analytics and knowledge graphs, control theory, watershed processes, environmental sensing, porous media and multifunctional materials.
Dr. Yeghiazarian is a recipient of numerous honors and awards, including the Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) award from NSF, the Ruth Kirschstein award from NIH, and the InterPore Rosette Award from the International Society for Porous Media. She directs the Urban Flooding Open Knowledge Network (UFOKN) and Water-Energy Nexus OKN (WEN-OKN) projects funded by the NSF Convergence Accelerator.