Dr. Amanda Darling
PHD FELLOW GRADUATE | Global Change Center
VT Graduate December 2024 • Civil and Environmental Engineering
Research Interests: Improving access to safe drinking water and sanitation for low resource settings, the intersection of environmental engineering and public health, rural drinking water systems
Advisor: Dr. Alasdair Cohen
Amanda Darling
Dr. Amanda Darling successfully defended her dissertation in September of 2024 and went on to become an ORISE Postdoctoral Fellow with the EPA in Washington, D.C. She is now a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Harvard's T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
Amanda was a Ph.D. student in the Environmental and Water Resources Engineering Program at Virginia Tech and advised by Dr. Alasdair Cohen. Her research interests include drinking water quality and treatment methods with a focus on rural areas of Central Appalachia. She attended the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign for her Bachelor’s degree in Civil & Environmental Engineering, then earned a M.S. degrees in Environmental Engineering and Public Health at Virginia Tech. Through the Interfaces of Global Change program, Amanda connected existing disparities for rural communities in the U.S. to her understanding of strategies to improve safe drinking water access globally.
For her Ph.D. dissertation, Amanda first conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis on drinking water quality and associated health outcomes in the Appalachian Region to identify key exposures of concern. Next she initiated a field-based study, in collaboration with local stakeholders, to evaluate and better characterize drinking water contaminants and associated health outcomes in a low-income rural region of Southwest Virginia. With these research findings, she hoped to contribute to the efforts for safe freshwater and drinking water resources in rural communities, and provide data for policy-makers to better inform decision making on water and sanitation issues.
In her free time, Amanda enjoys traveling, spending time outdoors, and volunteering with local community organizations. After graduate school, she hoped to continue conducting research at the intersection of environmental engineering and public health, potentially working for an agency or NGO researching water quality and security.
Last updated July 2026.