Dr. Samuel Munoz
2019 Keynote Speaker

Dr. Samuel Munoz is an Assistant Professor at Northeastern University with joint appointments in the Department of Marine & Environmental Sciences and the Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering. He holds a Ph.D. in Physical Geography from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and did postdoctoral training at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. His research focuses on understanding hydrological extremes and their connections to the natural and built environment. His research group at Northeastern is interested in the influence of climate variability, greenhouse warming, urbanization, and land use on flood hazard, and how floods and climate-related disasters shape landscapes and the inhabitants of those landscapes. This work draws on historical and geological perspectives to evaluate the causes and consequences of storms and floods, and often uses sedimentary records to reconstruct environmental changes over hundreds to thousands of years. Much of Sam’s research has focused on the Mississippi River basin, where he has traced the human and environmental histories of the river and its floodplain over the last millennium to improve our understanding of floods and their effects on people.