Steven Margulis

Civil and Environmental Engineering Department Chair

Steven Margulis is a professor and the chair of the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department at the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering. He is also a faculty member with the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability at UCLA and with the Joint Institute for Regional Earth System Science and Engineering, which is a collaboration with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Margulis’ research looks at a broad range of topics in terrestrial and atmospheric hydrology with an eye toward improving water resource management and mitigating environmental hazards. His lab, the Margulis Research Group, focuses on improving the characterization of hydrological states and fluxes, and understanding the mechanisms that affect their variability across time and space.

Among the many awards Margulis has received are the UCLA Distinguished Teaching Award and the UCLA Samueli Northrop Grumman Excellence in Teaching Award. He has also received a NASA New Investigator Award and a National Science Foundation CAREER Award.

Margulis is the author of “Introduction to Hydrology,” a publicly available electronic multimedia textbook for introductory hydrology courses, now used by more than 40 universities globally.

A member of the UCLA faculty since 2002, Margulis served as vice chair for graduate affairs in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering from 2012 to 2017. He holds a doctorate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.