Marc F. Muller, Assistant Professor |
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Hailing from a ski resort in the Swiss alps, I went into engineering with the laudable goal of becoming rich by manufacturing artificial diamonds for the Swiss watch industry. It took one trip to Southeast Asia to make me realize that the world has bigger problems, and that engineers can do something about them. I became passionate about water issues in developing countries. After a civil engineering license in Switzerland (MSc. EPFL) and several research trips in developing countries (Cambodia and Tanzania), where I was mostly interested in water quality issues (particularly arsenic), I moved to California as a Fulbright Scholar in the pursuit of multi-disciplinarity -- the only efficient way to address real world problems.
I did my PhD at the University of California Berkeley, where I was interested in streamflow prediction and rural electrification in Nepal, and a postdoc a Stanford University, where I focused on remote sensing and transboundary water issues in the Middle East. I also had the honor of teaching undergraduate maths at [Prison University Project], a degree-granting university program within the walls of St-Quentin State Prison (CA). While a hydrologist and water engineer at core, I am fascinated by creative ways to model human behavior (what economists do), and by transformative technologies to extract and disseminate knowledge from data (what computer scientists do). My passion as a researcher is to integrate insights from these fields in a useful way to promote equitable and sustainable global access to safe water and energy. |
