Tell us a bit about yourself:
My name is Dennis Catalina, and I’m an environmental and sanitary engineer at the University of LaSalle. I’m from Colombia–specifically from Fresno and Mariquita Tolima.
How did you develop an interest in this type of research?
In my country, I worked on projects focused on river protection with communities and the government. However, there, we don’t have the resilient infrastructure and know how to implement it. We also have many environmental problems like floods that need new strategies, particularly in rivers. In the past, our engineers have relied on concrete construction regardless of whether it negatively impacts the ecosystem. It is interesting to me to find new ways to use infrastructure to solve problems.
What is most exciting to you about this work?
While I am excited about helping communities be more resilient, I mostly love to work with rivers’ quality and ecology. Those are the initial reasons that drew me to learn about resilient infrastructure.
What do you hope to do in the future?
I would love to learn everything I can about this topic. At some point, I’d like to be able to save the rivers’ structure and help the people impacted by floods by working as an engineer.
Tell us about your research at UGA:
I just started my master’s degree in civil and environmental engineering. Currently, I’m working with my major professor Dr. Felix Santiago-Collazo on projects of floodplain reconnection on the Big Muddy river in Shawnee National Forest. Broadly speaking, we aim to answer how many and what size shallow water impoundments must be to alleviate the Mississippi River’s flooding and enhance the region’s flora and fauna. We plan to use hydrologic-hydraulic modeling techniques to quantify volumes and design the natural infrastructure.
Dennis is part of the Natural Infrastructure Graduate Fellowship, funded by Ducks Unlimited. Students in this program conduct both practice-oriented and basic research on NI methods and engineering guidance, tool development, cost and economic analysis, monitoring and adaptive management, and social dimensions of climate resilient infrastructure with an emphasis on integration of natural and conventional systems.
Learn more about the Natural Infrastructure Graduate Fellowship and potential opportunities to join the IRIS team as a student!