I am an Associate Professor of Freshwater Ecology and Conservation in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management at UC Berkeley. I lead the Ruhi Lab, co-lead Berkeley Freshwater, and co-direct the Institute for Parks, People, and Biodiversity.

My lab’s research program seeks to advance effective conservation and restoration of freshwater ecosystems in the face of drought. We combine computational approaches on hydrological and ecological data, field experiments, and natural history observations to understand how climate change and water scarcity are poised to alter aquatic biodiversity – and the ecosystem processes and services that depend on it.

I received a B.Sc. in Biology and a Ph.D. in Ecology from the University of Girona (Catalonia, Spain), researching  wetland ecosystem restoration. I have conducted most of my research in water-scarce regions of the world, namely the Mediterranean basin and the American Southwest. After my Ph.D., I became a postdoctoral researcher at Arizona State University, where I studied desert river food webs; and then a Fellow at the National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center (SESYNC) in Maryland, where I modeled impacts of flow alteration by dams across the U.S.

I started the Freshwater Ecology and Conservation Lab at UC Berkeley in 2018. Since then, I have been fortunate to work with an amazing group of inspiring, creative scientists. Our research has been honored with multiple awards such as the NSF CAREER Award, the Hellman Foundation Fellowship, and the California Sea Grant New Faculty Award. You can read about our research program here.