Navigating Smooth and Choppy Waters: Collaboration Stories and Strategies

Dr. Julia Perdrial is an interdisciplinary Earth scientist and professor at the University of Vermont. Her research examines how anthropogenic disturbances affect Earth surface processes, the carbon cycle, and freshwater quality, with broader implications for water security and water education. As a collaborative leader, she has spearheaded large interdisciplinary projects, including the NSF-funded Critical Zone Network initiative, where the team advances environmental data science and data access for water quality analysis. She actively applies team science principles to build supportive and collaborative scientific communities.

Dr. Lauren Lowman is an Associate Professor in the Engineering Department at Wake Forest University and has been at the university since 2018. She received a Ph.D. and M.S. in Civil and Environmental Engineering with a focus in Hydrology and Fluid Dynamics from Duke University, and a B.A. in Public Policy Studies from Duke University. Her research investigates how extreme events affect overall ecosystem health, productivity, and sustainability using numerical models, geospatial data analysis, and field experiments. She has experience collaborating in a number of large, interdisciplinary projects including the NSF-funded Critical Zone Network (CZNet), Accelerating Research through International Network-to-Network Collaborations (AccelNet), and other collaborative research grants.

Dr. Lixin Jin is a Professor in the Department of Earth, Environmental and Resource Sciences at the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP).  Her work focuses on how irrigation has modified the dynamics of pedogenic carbonate in drylands and impacted CO2 fluxes, with implication on soil quality and crop yields. She leads the NSF-funded drylands critical zone thematic cluster, with a total of 17 researchers and educators from five institutions/organizations. She received her PhD in Environmental Geochemistry from the University of Michigan and was a postdoc scholar at Penn State as part of Susquehanna/Shale Hills critical zone observatory.