Assaad Mrad

Brief Bio

I'm an engineer turned environmental scientist. I'm interested in creating a pipeline for translating fundamental environmental science to make robust decisions with real-world impacts: for humans and ecosystems everywhere. My goal is to reconcile the disparate arenas of environmental analytics and decision-making with the irreplaceable small-scale and fundamental research.

Starting January 2021, I am a wildfire researcher appointed jointly by UC Irvine's Civil Engineering Department and Wake Forest University's Engineering School. My goal is to advance our knowledge of the intimate connection between Earth's hydrology, its ecosystems, and the incidence and spread of wildfires.

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From the fall of 2016 to 2020, I completed a productive Ph.D. under the tutelage of Gaby Katul. In 4 years, I solved a variety of environmental problems spanning a multitude of scales. The most rewarding aspect was collaborating with world-class scientists from around the world. With them, I forecasted groundwater-based agricultural production, discovered the role of conduit grouping in flowering plants, studied species competition and the emergence of stand density power-laws.

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Prior to my Ph.D., I graduated as a Mechanical Engineer from the American University of Beirut. In that time, I discovered my deep passion for understanding nature from an engineer's point of view.