Araya defends PhD dissertation at UC Merced!

August 13, 2019 

Samuel Araya is a new PhD at UC Merced!  On August 13, 2019, in the Science and Engineering 2 building on the UCM campus, he successfully defended his PhD research before a review committee of four professors and about thirty well-wishers who took part in the public seminar part of his defense.  Very hearty “Congratulations” go out to Dr. Samuel Araya on this wonderful and very well-earned accomplishment!

For the past five or so years, Dr. Araya has worked with his mentor professor, Dr. Teamrat Ghezzehei, on a very wide range of quite interesting topics that have addressed soil hydraulic properties and function, machine learning models, conservation agriculture management impacts on soil structure and water relations, as well as modelling of landscape hydrology using UAS and machine learning.  The seminar that he presented and the sheer body of work that he has completed were most impressive and he received a very nice recognition by the assembled audience following his research overview presentation.  

Both Drs. Araya and Ghezzehei have worked on CASI's NRI Project field in Five Points, CA during the past few years and one of the three areas of work that were reported on by Dr. Araya included a summary of this work.  For CASI folks who are familiar with the NRI Project, let me just say that there are going to be some very interesting findings that will be released in the very near future stemming from this work of Araya and Ghezzehei. 

 

Drs. Samuel Araya (right) and Teamrat Ghezzehei of UC Merced immediately following the successful PhD defense by Araya, August 13, 2019 on the UC Merced campus

Drs. Samuel Araya (right) and Teamrat Ghezzehei of UC Merced immediately following the successful PhD defense by Araya, August 13, 2019 on the UC Merced campus

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