CW3E Welcomes Kyla Semmendinger-Raney

August 7, 2024

Kyla Semmendinger-Raney joined CW3E in July 2024 as a Research & Development Engineer on the Water Resources Engineering Team.

Kyla earned her MS and PhD in Environmental Engineering from Cornell University in Ithaca, New York (2023) and her BSE in Environmental Engineering from Mercer University in Macon, Georgia (2018). Prior to joining CW3E, Kyla completed a postdoctoral research fellowship at the Cooperative Institute for Great Lakes Research, housed at the NOAA Great Lakes Research Environmental Laboratory in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Kyla’s doctoral and postdoctoral research focused on improving outflow regulation within the Great Lakes region. Kyla’s work leveraged subseasonal-to-annual forecasts, many-objective optimization, and impact analysis modelling to explore improvements to the existing operations under current climate conditions as well as under plausible future climate. During this work, Kyla worked extensively with a bi-national science advisory board, stakeholders, and water managers to identify improvements to the current outflow regulation policy.

At CW3E, Kyla will work on the Water Resources Engineering Team and support FIRO efforts by developing and evaluating forecast-informed operating policies throughout the Western United States. She hopes to translate her experience working in highly regulated and constrained water systems in the Great Lakes to the West and make meaningful contributions to FIRO-related projects.