Emily Matthews

IGC FELLOW    |   Global Change Center

Ph.D. Student  •  Civil and Environmental Engineering

Advisors : Dr. Ryan Calder

Research Interests: Public health; Environmental health and policy making; Environmental modeling; Long-range impacts of environmental hazards and interventions

emilymatthews@vt.edu • LinkedIn

Emily is a Ph.D. student in the Charles E. Via, Jr. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering studying Environmental and Water Resources at Virginia Tech. She is currently a graduate research assistant in Dr. Ryan Calder’s Models for Environmental Health and Policy Lab, developing novel models for soilborne, airborne, and waterborne hazards to vulnerable populations. She is especially interested in the development of models to identify risks to vulnerable rural populations in the context of changing climate and land-use patterns.

Emily’s research background is varied across physics, engineering, number theory, and ocean plastics disciplines. She earned a Bachelor of Science in physics from Washington and Lee University (Lexington, VA) in 2022, which provided her the first-principles understanding of physical processes she now applies to complex models of the environment. During the summer of 2021 she spent 6 weeks onboard the SSV Robert C. Seamans where she contributed to an ongoing ocean plastics research project through the Sea Education Association. This experience sailing through the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre led her to a desire to tailor the broader impacts of her research work on tangible outcomes both in the environment and on people.

She hopes that participating in the Interfaces of Global Change IGEP and the T32 Rural Environmental Health Training Program will open the door to new collaborations and research questions enabled by a community of transdisciplinary scholars. As a first-generation college student she hopes to use her position at Virginia Tech to elevate challenges faced by other underrepresented communities. Emily is passionate about helping problem solve these larger environmental concerns and looks forward to the collaborative nature of the larger Global Change Center.