2026 Cohort
Sahar Souizi
My name is Sahar Souizi. I’m a Ph.D. candidate in Environmental Engineering, working with Dr. Lee Blaney in the Department of Chemical, Biochemical, and Environmental Engineering. My research focuses on developing scalable Donnan dialysis reactors to recover nutrients from agricultural and municipal wastewater, helping mitigate nutrient pollution while enabling circular nutrient economies. To better understand and scale up these systems, I develop first-principles models that describe multicomponent ion transport through ion-exchange membranes under complex water chemistries. Participation in the UM-CIP program will allow me to integrate high-performance computing into my research, enabling large-scale simulations, uncertainty quantification, and advanced modeling approaches that will accelerate the development of scalable nutrient recovery technologies.
Aryan Jagani
My name is Aryan Jagani, and I am a Master’s student in Information Systems. I am currently working with Professor Erle Ellis on the Nature Relationship Index (NRI) project, an interdisciplinary research initiative that aims to understand and measure how people around the world relate to nature. In this project, I work on building data pipelines and analytical tools using Python and R to process survey and text data, helping transform qualitative responses into measurable indicators that can support sustainability research and policy discussions. I am excited to contribute to work that connects data science with environmental and societal impact. Through the UM-CIP program, I look forward to collaborating with researchers across disciplines and strengthening my ability to apply data-driven methods to real-world sustainability challenges.
Maryam Rishehri
My name is Maryam Rishehri, and I am a PhD candidate in Environmental Engineering at UMBC working with Dr. Claire Welty. My research investigates how water moves through urban watersheds and how long it remains underground before reaching streams. Using three-dimensional hydrologic modeling with ParFlow-CLM and EcoSLIM particle tracking, I analyze subsurface flow paths and residence time patterns across urban watersheds to better understand how urbanization influences water storage and contaminant transport. The UM-CIP program will support this work by providing advanced computing resources and training that enable large-scale simulations and analysis of complex datasets.
Michael Ocasio