Current Students
Lauren Krauss
Lauren Krauss is a PhD student in the Ecosystem Services lab. She is in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Virginia Tech. Lauren received her B.S. in Biology from Virginia Tech in 2017 and her M.S. in Environmental Engineering from Virginia Tech in 2020. Her research with Dr. Rippy is focused on green infrastructure ecosystem services, with an emphasis on the capacity of plant functional traits to restore hydrologic services in urban areas.
Ben Roston
Ben Roston is a PhD student in the Ecosystem Services lab. He is a Via fellow in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Virginia Tech. He received his B.S. and M.S. in Civil and Environmental Engineering from Virginia Tech in 2020 and 2021. His research is focused on using fuzzy cognitive maps to understand opportunities for and barriers to collective management of emerging environmental challenges such as freshwater salinization
Alisha Sutton is a PhD student in the Ecosystem Services lab. She received her M.S. in Civil and Environmental Engineering from Virginia Tech in 2023. Her research is focused on PFAS accumulation in animal tissues, the evolving regulatory landscape for PFAS in the United States, and wild food safety
Alisha Sutton
Megan Blumenauer is a MS student in the Ecosystem Services lab. She received her B.S. in Civil and Environmental Engineering from University of Maryland in 2023. Her research is focused on green infrastructure ecosystem services, with an emphasis on cultural services provisioning (aesthetics, sense of place) and their assessment using virtual reality tools
Megan Blumenauer
Former Students
Kaitlin Fausey
Samuel Long
Kaitlin Fausey was a Masters student in the Ecosystem Services lab. She graduated in Fall, 2022 with a M.S. in Civil and Environmental Engineering. Her research focused on urban greenspace perceptions. She was particularly interested in understanding which services green stormwater infrastructure are perceived to provide relative to other landscapes, and how an individuals educational background shapes those perceptions.
Samuel Long was a Masters student in the Ecosystem Services lab. He graduated in Spring 2023, with his M.S. in Civil and Environmental Engineering. His thesis looked at the resilience of stormwater detention basins to freshwater salinization caused by winter salt events. He was particularly interested in the capacity of green infrastructure to self-repair through phytoremediation.
Valeria Lebron was a Masters student in the Ecosystem Services lab. She graduated in Spring 2023, with her M.S. in Civil and Environmental Engineering. Her project and report focused on characterizing stakeholder planning and implementation networks for green stormwater infrastructure and evaluating the influence of different network structures on ecosystem services provisioning
Valeria Lebron