Cyndi Vail Castro, PhD, PE

Postdoctoral Fellow | National Center for Atmospheric Science (NCAR)

Cyndi is a hydrologist whose research focuses on convergent human-water systems and hydrological modeling across scales. She is a postdoctoral fellow in the Research Applications Laboratory (RAL) at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, CO. Her former postdoc was with Murugesu Sivapalan at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where she studied process dominance in green infrastructure catchments and also helped advance the field of socio-hydrology with international partners. Her master's thesis was supervised by David Maidment, where she advanced HEC-HMS model paramaterization and development through CyberGIS capabilities. There she also analyzed the applicability of the NHDPlus hydrological dataset to the early National Water Model framework. This education was funded by the NSF GRFP and NSF EAR-PF fellowships.

Cyndi is a graduate of Texas A&M University (BS), University of Texas at Austin (MS), and University of Houston (PhD) where she majored in Civil Engineering with an emphasis on water resources and GIS. Between degrees, Cyndi worked for about a decade as a professional civil engineer with AECOM, Quiddity Engineering, and the City of Houston on numerous water resources projects where she specialized in riverine geomorphology, low-impact development, and hydrologic/hydraulic modeling both locally and internationally. Her ongoing research explores human decision-making; stakeholder partnerships; green infrastructure; socio-environmental justice; geospatial analysis; water systems modeling; hurricane forecasting; and reservoir operations.

With experience in water resources consulting and municipal governance, Cyndi is excited about questions at the science-policy interface. She is working with an excellent team at NCAR and parterning universities toward better understanding how to integrate humans within water models in a meaningful and reliable manner for informed water management and policy-making. Having lost her own home 3 different times due to hurricane storm surge, wind damage, and flash flooding, Cyndi's overall goal is to leverage scientific advancements in a practical way so that all members of society can look forward to a more secure water future.