Mission

Cara Tobin is a civil and environmental professional engineer. She is conducting her PhD on predicting floods in the Swiss Alps for flood control and hydropower management in the context of the MINERVE project funded by the cantons of Valais and Vaud. Her research specializes in the geostatistical interpolation of temperature and precipitation fields, the calibration of a hydrologic and hydraulic model, and the integration of Bayesian uncertainty principles in models. Previously, she completed environmental projects for water and waste water planning on the global level in the United States, New Zealand, Australia, Armenia and Azerbaijan.

Biography

CARA C. TOBIN, PE Civil Engineer EDUCATION PhD in Environmental Engineering, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Fulbright Fellowship 01/2007-present Master's in Civil and Environmental Engineering, Stanford University, National Science Foundation (NSF) Fellowship Recipient 06/2001 Bachelor's in Civil and Environmental Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, National Science Foundation Undergraduate Research Fellow 06/1999 PROFESSIONAL SUMMARY Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Department of Environmental Engineering, Lausanne, Switzerland, MINERVE2011 · Research on Predicting floods and managing hydropower in the Swiss Alps. Project includes improving knowledge of hydrological processes and conducting uncertainty analysis. 10/2007 - present Asian Development Bank: World Bank, Baku, Azerbaijan · Environmental engineering specialist in charge of reviewing environmental aspects of water supply and wastewater discharge designs. Environmental Assessments Performed and managed the local environmental, social and resettlement specialists. 02/2009 - 07/2009 Asian Development Bank / World Bank, Yerevan, Armenia · Environmental engineering specialist for the assessment of water supply designs. Performed Environmental Assessments and Resettlement due diligence. 01/2008 - 04/2008 Temple University, Department of Civil Engineering, Philadelphia, USA · Adjunct Professor for Environmental Engineering, Introduction to the Environment and Environmental Engineering 10/2005-06/2006 CH2M HILL, Environmental Engineering Consultancy, Philadelphia, USA · Project leader for river discharge ammonia toxicity study · Engineer in charge of over $ 100,000 in WWTP design upgrades 10/2004-06/2006 MWH Ltd., Environmental Engineering Consultancy, Christchurch, NZ and Brisbane, AU • Leader hydraulic engineer for major components of a $ 150 million wastewater and desalination project · Head shape for a dozen water and groundwater projects 02/2003-09/2004 Kennedy / Jenks Consultants, Civil Engineering Consultancy, San Francisco, USA · Environmental engineer in charge of Drinking Water Source Assessments and water quality sampling programs 08/2001-01/2003 Stanford Environmental Fluid Mechanics Lab, USA · Developer of a 3D computer model simulating turbulent mixing at lateral boundaries due to steepening and breaking of internal waves 08/2000-06/2001 Georgia Instititute of Technology, Civil Engineering Labs, USA · Analyzed influence of copper sorption rates on particle flocculation kinetics Developed turbulence · PIV experiments in hydraulic flume 06/1998-06/2000 AFFILIATIONS and SPECIALIZATIONS . Fluent en Anglais et Français, proficient in Spanish · Professional Civil Engineer (PE072050), ASCE, AGU, Fulbright Alumnus · Experienced with ArcGIS, Matlab, R Statistical Analysis, MapInfo, MODFLOW, H2OMap, AutoCAD, Idrisi, Unix / Lenox, Fortran, NetCDF, Visual Basic