CV

Education ***

Ph.D. Candidate, Civil and Environmental Engineering (Environmental Water Resource Systems), Cornell University (2021 – present; expected 2027)
- Advisor: Prof. Patrick M. Reed, Reed Research Group
- Dissertation focus: understanding and managing risks to water resource systems in the Delaware River Basin under deeply uncertain future hydroclimatic and socioeconomic conditions
B.S. in Civil Engineering (water resources concentration), University of New Mexico, 2021
- Minor in Interdisciplinary Liberal Arts
Study Abroad, University of Leeds, UK, 2017 – 2018

Research experience ****

Graduate Research Assistant & NSF Graduate Research Fellow, Cornell University (2021 – present)
- Water resource systems risk assessment in the Delaware River Basin (DRB), a heavily managed basin supplying more than 13 million people across four states
- Developed a probabilistic streamflow reconstruction framework (prediction in ungauged basins + Bayesian bias correction) producing a 1,000-member ensemble of daily DRB streamflows for 1945–2023, extending the record to include the 1960s drought of record
- Co-developer of Pywr-DRB, an open-source water management simulation model of the DRB
- Lead developer of SynHydro, a Python library for stochastic streamflow generation
- Exploratory modeling and scenario discovery to characterize water supply vulnerabilities under changing drought extremes
- Contributor to the interagency Integrated Hydro-Terrestrial Modeling (IHTM) effort
- Regular contributor to the WaterProgramming blog
Research Associate, U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, Brackish Groundwater National Desalination Research Facility (2020)
- Studied the feasibility of sustainable desalination waste (concentrate) disposal in southern New Mexico
Undergraduate Research Assistant, UNM Center for Water & Environment (2019 – 2020)
- Studied nutrient dynamics in headwater streams of the Rio Grande
- Supervisor: Prof. Ricardo González-Pinzón
Undergraduate Researcher, Virginia Tech Institute for Critical Technology & Applied Science (Summer 2019)
- NSF-funded Research Experience for Undergraduates
- Studied peatland soil and hydrology in the Great Dismal Swamp
- Contributed to Word et al. (2022), Hydrological Processes
Transportation Planning Intern, Albuquerque Mid-Region Council of Governments (2018)
- Identified trends in pedestrian and cycling traffic and proposed improvements to cycling infrastructure in Albuquerque, NM

Skills *****

Water resource systems analysis:
- Water management simulation modeling (pywr / Pywr-DRB)
- Stochastic and synthetic streamflow generation
- Streamflow prediction in ungauged basins; bias correction
- Multi-objective optimization (MOEAs) and direct policy search
- Exploratory modeling, scenario discovery, robustness and sensitivity analysis
Statistics & machine learning:
- Bayesian inference (PyMC), hierarchical and regression models, copulas
- Tree-based ensemble methods (gradient boosted trees, BART)
Computing:
- Python (NumPy, pandas, xarray, scikit-learn, PyMC, Pyomo, matplotlib), R, MATLAB
- High-performance computing with MPI/SLURM; reproducible, packaged scientific software; Git/GitHub; documentation with Sphinx and Jupyter Book
- Hydrologic data services (USGS NWIS, HyRiver, National Hydrologic Model, National Water Model, Daymet, Microsoft Planetary Computer)

Software & Data *****

SynHydro — Python library for stochastic streamflow generation (lead developer)
Pywr-DRB — Open-source water management model of the Delaware River Basin (co-developer)
Delaware River Basin Probabilistic Daily Streamflow Reconstruction Ensemble, 1945–2023 — Zenodo data release
See the Projects page for a complete list

Publications *******

Balancing Supply and Financial Risks in Water Utility Decision Making under Uncertainty

Petagna, C., Li, D., Gorelick, D. E., Gold, D. F., Amestoy, T., Lau, L., Asefa, T., Wang, H., Svrdlin, S., Reed, P. M., & Characklis, G. W. (2026). "Balancing Supply and Financial Risks in Water Utility Decision Making under Uncertainty." Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management, 152(4), 04026006.

Integrated river basin assessment framework combining probabilistic streamflow reconstruction, Bayesian bias correction, and drought storyline analysis

Amestoy, T. J., Hamilton, A. L., & Reed, P. M. (2026). "Integrated river basin assessment framework combining probabilistic streamflow reconstruction, Bayesian bias correction, and drought storyline analysis." Environmental Modelling & Software, 195, 106756.

Pywr-DRB: An open-source Python model for water availability and drought risk assessment in the Delaware River Basin

Hamilton, A. L., Amestoy, T. J., & Reed, P. M. (2024). "Pywr-DRB: An open-source Python model for water availability and drought risk assessment in the Delaware River Basin." Environmental Modelling & Software, 181, 106185.

Peatland drainage alters soil structure and water retention properties: Implications for ecosystem function and management

Word, C. S., McLaughlin, D. L., Strahm, B. D., Stewart, R. D., Varner, J. M., Wurster, F. C., Amestoy, T. J., & Link, N. T. (2022). "Peatland drainage alters soil structure and water retention properties: Implications for ecosystem function and management." Hydrological Processes, 36(3), e14533.

Talks ******

Exploratory Modeling to Better Understand How Changing Drought Extremes May Shape Water Supply Vulnerabilities in the Delaware River Basin

December 16, 2025

Talk at American Geophysical Union (AGU) Fall Meeting 2025, New Orleans, Louisiana

A Probabilistic Streamflow Reconstruction Method to Support Coupled Human-Natural Systems Evaluations in Data-Scarce Reservoir Systems

December 11, 2024

Poster at American Geophysical Union (AGU) Fall Meeting 2024, Washington, D.C.

Assessing the Delaware River Basin’s Vulnerability to the 1960s Drought of Record Using a Mid-Twentieth Century Reconstruction of Streamflows

June 25, 2024

Talk at WaterSciCon 2024 (AGU & CUAHSI), St. Paul, Minnesota

Diagnostic Assessment of Water Supply Reliability in the Delaware River Basin Under Historic Streamflow Conditions

December 16, 2023

Poster at American Geophysical Union (AGU) 2023, San Francisco, California

Student Engagement and Leadership Panel

November 16, 2019

Panel at 2019 Peace Engineering Consortium, Albuquerque, New Mexico

Teaching ******

ENMGT 5920: Product Management

CEE 5980: Decision Framing and Analytics

Awards *******

Best Oral Presentation, Cornell Civil & Environmental Engineering Graduate Research Symposium (2024)
National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship (2021)
UNM Dept. of Civil & Environmental Engineering Outstanding Student of the Year (2018 & 2020)
1st Place, Bureau of Reclamation Intern Webinar Symposium (2020)
1st Place, Engineering Ethics Debate, New Mexico Tech (2019)

Trevor Amestoy

CV