Marston Research Group

the people behind the research

Landon Marston, PhD, PE

Associate Professor

Appointments

2024 - Present

Associate Professor

Virginia Tech
 Civil & Environmental Engineering Department

2020 - 2024

Assistant Professor

Virginia Tech
 Civil & Environmental Engineering Department

2017 - 2020

Assistant Professor

Kansas State University
 Civil Engineering Department

2009 - 2013

Hydrologic & Hydraulic Engineer

US Army Corps of Engineers

Louisville District   /   Hydrologic Engineering Center (HEC)   /   International Center for Integrated Water Resources Management

Education

2017

Ph.D in Civil and Environmental Engineering

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

2009

M.Eng. in Civil Engineering

Texas A&M University

2008

Master of Business Administration

University of Kentucky

2007

B.S. in Civil Engineering

University of Kentucky

Curriculum vitae

meet the team

Beth Prior

postdoc

Ph.D. Viriginia Tech, 2025
B.S. Auburn University, 2019
 
 
Research Interests: data driven approaches in hydrology, remote sensing, geospatial science, water resources management, environmental modeling

Emme Bina

phd student

M.S. Virginia Tech, 2024

B.S. University of Kansas, 2023

Research Interests: water scarcity, water policy, socio-hydrology, environmental sustainability

Musab Waqar

phd student

M.S. Virginia Tech, 2025

B.E. NED University of Engineering and Technology, 2021

Research Interests: remote sensing, spatial data analysis, water resource management, hydro-climatology, machine learning

Sameer Dhakal

phd student

M.S. Virginia Tech, 2025

B.E. Tribhuvan University, 2021

Research Interests: climate change, socio-hydrology, water resources management, and food-energy-water nexus

Anvari Rahman

phd student

B.S. Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology, 2024
 
Research Interests: hydrologic modeling, remote sensing, water quality and treatment, water resource management, climate change, sustainable development

Sarath Suresh

postdoc

Ph.D. University of Washington, 2026

M.Tech. Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, 2021

B.Tech. Civil Engineering, Mahatma Gandhi University, India, 2018

Research Interests: satellite remote sensing for terrestrial hydrology, dam operations for flood risk management, large scale geospatial datasets, AI and machine learning for Earth system data, forecast-informed reservoir operations, water-food-climate interactions.

Shutonu Mitra

graduate researcher

M.S. Computer Science, Virginia Tech, 2025

B.S. Computer Science and Engineering, MIST, Bangladesh, 2022

Research Interests: AI/ML, large language models, agentic AI systems, data extraction, knowledge graphs, geospatial/environmental analytics, and decision support systems.

Gambhir Lamsal

postdoc

Ph.D. Virginia Tech, 2025

M.S. Kansas State University, 2020

B.E. Tribhuvan University, 2015

Research Interests: food-energy-water nexus, crop modeling, hydrology

Eric Sjöstedt

postdoc

Ph.D. Northern Arizona University, 2026 

M.S. West Virginia University, 2022

B.A. West Virginia University, 2020

Research Interests: complex systems, food-energy-water nexus, hydrologic modelling, trade & supply chain networks, critical infrastructure, data science & machine learning

Solomon Klein

masters student

B.S. Math & Geology, Brown University, 2022
 

Research Interests: water policy & management; remote sensing; science-policy interface; data science & machine learning, hydrologic modeling

Mehdi Naderi

phd candidate

M.Sc.  Water Resources Engineering, University of Tehran, Iran

Research Interests: integrated water resources modeling and management; coupled human-natural systems; water-food-energy nexus; climate change impact assessment and adaptation; probabilistic assessment of extreme events; application of system thinking, remote sensing and machine learning in water resources management and decision making

Paul DeBole

phd student

M.S. Virginia Tech, 2025

B.S. Virginia Tech, 2024

Research Interests: water scarcity, dam and reservoir management, and water-food nexus

Alumni

graduate researchers & postdocs

  1. Kerim Dickson, Postdoctoral Fellow (2019-2020) –> United States Bureau of Reclamation

  2.  Sam Brown, MS (2021) –> HDR, Inc. 

  3. Ben Roston, MS (2021) –> PhD student at Virginia Tech

  4. Karsten Zuidema, MS (2022) –> Dewberry

  5. Jackie McCarthy, MS (2022) –> Bowman Consulting

  6. Yufei ‘Zoe’ Ao, PhD (2023) –> Postdoctoral Fellow at Arizona State University (Jay Famiglietti) 

  7. Alex Miller, MS (2023) –> Straughan Environmental

  8. Ben Winter, MS (2023) –> Hazen and Sawyer

  9. Will Tysinger, MS (2023) –> Schnabel Engineering 

  10. Nolen Anderson, MS (2023) –> Kimley-Horn

  11. Mandy Smith, MS (2023) –> Langan Engineering

  12. Chung-Yi Lin, Postdoctoral Fellow (2023-2024) –> Postdoctoral Fellow at Cornell University (Pat Reed)

  13. Megan Schantz, MS (2024) –> HDR, Inc.

  14. Maria Amaya, Postdoctoral Fellow (2022-2024) –> Stantec

  15. Md Abu Bakar Siddik, MS (2020), PhD (2024) –> Postdoctoral Fellow at Oak Ridge National Lab

  16. Md Abu Bakar Siddik, MS (2020), PhD (2024) –> Postdoctoral Fellow at Oak Ridge National Lab

  17. Qiuyun “Cecilia” Yu PhD (2025) –> Lecturer at Chengdu Jincheng College, China

  18. Mohammad Yunus Naseri PhD (2025) –> Postdoc at UC Davis (Alvar Escriva-Bou)

  19. Johanna Capone, MS (2025)

  20. Elizabeth Beyer, MS (2025) –> Pursuing PhD at Tufts University 

  21. Emme Bina, MS (2024) –> Pursuing PhD at Virginia Tech

  22. Musab Waqar, MS (2025) –> Dean’s Fellowship Program Habib University

  23. Sammer Dhakal, MS (2025) –> Pursuing PhD at Virginia Tech

  24. Paul DeBole, MS (2025) –> Pursuing PhD at Virginia Tech

  25. Gambhir Lamsal, MS (2020), PhD (2025) –> Postdoctoral Fellow at Virginia Tech (Landon Marston)

  26. Carly Sear, MS (2026) –> Arcadis

undergraduate researchers

Brady Doyle, Sarah Paz, Paul DeBole, Johanna Capone, Amanda Smith, Megan Schantz, Raqin Siddique, Jacob Shemer, Sara Lindstrom, Caroline Kersey, Alex Brown, Katherine Sullivan, Sarah Birchard, Bethan Heng, Mariana Cruz, Lucas Nunez, Isabelle Frankel, Miguel Perezz, Ryan Rogowski, Alyssa Wherry, Angie Mitchell, Aubrey Busenitz, Bailey Waters, Raul Vera Parzajuk, Elliot Schrag, Julia Keiter, Sam Brown, Kara Hinshaw, Rebecca Andrus 

Copyright © 2026 by Landon Marston