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 affiliated 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.

“My goal with all students is to make them expert and lifelong learners so that they are not only focused on the topic they are currently learning, but that they are curious and agile enough to teach themselves new tools and move into other unexplored areas they might not initially be comfortable with.”

Q: What are some of the main research projects that you are focusing on in this academic year?
A: My lab’s recent work has focused on developing new methods for estimating how much water is stored in mountain snowpacks around the world. This includes areas in our own backyard like the Sierra Nevada Mountains and Western U.S., but also in other areas like the Andes, Alps and High Mountain Asia, where large population centers rely heavily on melting spring snowpacks for their water supply. Because these areas are often harsh environments and relatively inaccessible, we need to rely on satellite-borne measurements to retrieve the amount and distribution of water stored in snowpacks, typically referred to as snow water equivalent (SWE). However, no satellite currently in orbit was specifically designed to measure SWE. As a result, much of our work has been aimed at using the satellite data we do have from the last 30+ years and thinking about new ways we could make more optimal measurements targeting snow-derived water resources. The goal of our work is to have real-time estimates of water storage (i.e., SWE) and fluxes (e.g., snowfall and snowmelt) across the globe to inform better decision making.

Q: How can a better understanding of the hydrologic cycle help us prepare for and respond to environmental challenges like floods or droughts?
A: Understanding the hydrologic cycle requires accurate information about water storage and fluxes at regional to global scales. It is only relatively recently, through the advent of remote sensing technologies, that we are moving toward better knowledge of the hydrologic cycle at these scales. While we are all used to seeing the beautiful and intriguing images of our planet from space, there remains a gap in transforming those measurements into actionable information. As we continue to become more capable of reliably and consistently producing such information, there will be significant potential for mitigating hazards like floods and droughts. Such events are often multi-billion-dollar disasters that can also cost human lives. Snow is a good example where actionable information would have significant benefits, because there is a built-in lead time between when water is stored in mountain snowpacks (in the winter) and when its snowmelt-driven streamflow is generated in the spring. Accurate characterization of winter snowpacks would lead to better predictions of flood and drought conditions and the required reservoir management needed to mitigate negative impacts.

Q: How will your research be translated into new technologies? 
A: Over the last five years, I led two large-team NASA proposal efforts in collaboration with JPL aimed at designing, building and launching a snow-focused satellite mission. In developing these proposals, we learned a lot about the science and technology needs for such a mission and look forward to upcoming opportunities that could be used to target such a concept. In the meantime, we are continuing to pursue research efforts aimed at using the techniques in the proposed mission concepts to enhance the ability to use data from other upcoming missions.

Q: How do you work with undergraduate and graduate students on these research projects?
A: My goal with all students is to make them experts and lifelong learners, so that they are not only focused on the topic they are currently learning, but that they are curious and agile enough to teach themselves new tools and move into other unexplored areas they might not initially be comfortable with. Many students who are just starting don’t have a good idea of what engineering research really is. I try to demystify it and get them excited about being able to address questions or problems that haven’t been solved before. Ideally, by the end of their research project, students are teaching me more than I’m teaching them.

Q: As the newly appointed chair of the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department, could you discuss your key priorities and goals for the department moving forward? How does your department cultivate connections between students and faculty?
A: The research and teaching activities in the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department are tightly connected to solving societally relevant problems (i.e., transportation, clean water, the food-energy-water nexus, decarbonization, resilience to earthquakes, wildfire, sea-level rise, flood, droughts, etc.). The recent devastating wildfires in Los Angeles hit particularly close to home for our community. Leveraging our department’s ongoing work and moving into new research areas for how we can more robustly mitigate these kinds of hazards in the first place and help communities build back in a more resilient way are areas we aspire to lead in. Being able to target such goals will require rethinking how we design large urban areas that are prone to increasing natural and compound hazards. We will aim to do so by continuing to attract the best undergraduate and graduate students who want to work on these problems, providing resources for our faculty to continue to make advances, and enhancing how we work with the community, industry and municipal agencies.