Geospatial Engineer for Climate Impact Analytics

Luay El Bitar

Berkeley, CA **********@********.*** linkedin.com/in/luay-el-bitar

Education

University of California, Berkeley Aug 2025 – May 2026 Master of Science in Environmental Engineering GPA: 3.93/4.0

• Specialization: Environmental Fluid Mechanics and Hydrology American University of Beirut (AUB) Aug 2021 – May 2025 Bachelor of Engineering in Civil Engineering GPA: 4.0/4.0

• Placed on the Dean's Honor List every semester since enrollment

• Recipient of the LIFE Scholarship and Said Khalaf Scholarship Professional Experience

Water & Environmental Engineering Intern Nov 2024 – Jan 2025 Dar Al-Handasah (Shair & Partners) Beirut, Lebanon

• Contributed to Environmental Impact Assessments (EIAs) for water and infrastructure projects, preparing technical sections on baseline conditions, impact prediction, and mitigation measures

• Applied WaterGEMS to model water distribution networks, analyzing pressure zones, pipe sizing, and system performance under varying demand scenarios

• Used SewerCAD and StormCAD to design and evaluate sewer and stormwater drainage systems, ensuring compliance with hydraulic design standards and local regulations

• Collaborated with senior engineers on project documentation, client deliverables, and regulatory submissions within the Water and Environmental department

Graduate Student Instructor Aug 2025 – Present

University of California, Berkeley Berkeley, CA

• Led laboratory sections for Engineering 7: Introduction to Computer Programming and Numerical Methods

• Instructed students in Python and MATLAB, covering programming fundamentals, numerical methods, and data visualization; held weekly office hours for individualized support Research Experience

MSc Researcher – Water and Carbon Lab Oct 2025 – Present University of California, Berkeley Berkeley, CA

• Developing geospatial surface water maps by integrating CYGNSS GNSS-R and SPIRE satellite observations to support flood and drought monitoring across high-latitude regions

• Building scalable Python pipelines on a Linux HPC environment (Savio cluster) to process and cross-calibrate large, heterogeneous geospatial and remote sensing datasets

• Applying time-series analysis, anomaly detection, calibration correction algorithms, and Random Forest models to classify hydrological signals from satellite instrument artifacts

• Translating high-dimensional satellite data into physically interpretable hydrological diagnostics and visualizations for climate research

Visiting Researcher Jun 2024 – Aug 2024

University of Texas at Austin Austin, TX

• Co-authored a peer-reviewed publication on contaminant release during permafrost thaw, connecting hydrological change to environmental risk in climate-sensitive Arctic regions

• Designed laboratory methodology to create synthetic permafrost and study thaw-driven water release

• Developed GIS-based maps of permafrost distribution and thawing trends Selected Projects

LSTM-Based Streamflow Prediction

• Designed and implemented a deep learning model (LSTM) in Python (TensorFlow/Keras) to predict streamflow from USGS discharge records; achieved Nash-Sutcliffe Efficiency of 0.89 Flood Frequency Analysis

• Performed flood frequency analysis using Gumbel and Log-Pearson Type III distributions to estimate return periods and extreme discharge quantiles for hydrological hazard characterization Numerical Modeling of River Contaminant Transport

• Built finite difference solvers for coupled advection-diffusion-reaction PDEs governing contaminant transport and oxygen dynamics in rivers, with ghost-node boundary conditions and stability analysis Publications

Gulfam-E-Jannat, S., El Bitar, L., Baghirzade, B. S., Arora, U., Sinha, N., Dev, S., Kanevskiy, M., Aggarwal, S., Kirisits, M. J., & Saleh, N. B. (2025). Unlocking the past: Release of hazardous contaminants into water from thawing permafrost. Journal of Hazardous Materials, 495, 139068. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhazmat.2025.139068

Skills

Water Infrastructure Modeling: WaterGEMS, SewerCAD, StormCAD, hydraulic/hydrologic design principles Geospatial & Remote Sensing: ArcGIS / QGIS, satellite data processing (GNSS-R, SAR), Python geospatial stack

(xarray, rasterio, geopandas)

Programming & Computing: Python (NumPy, SciPy, pandas, TensorFlow/Keras, scikit-learn), MATLAB, Linux HPC environments

Environmental & Data Analysis: Environmental Impact Assessments (EIAs), statistical time-series analysis, extreme value theory, machine learning (LSTM, Random Forest) Languages: English (native), Arabic (native), French (B1) Relevant Coursework

• Surface Water Hydrology

• Environmental Fluid Mechanics

• Water Quality Engineering

• Hydraulics

• Climate Change Adaptation

Honors and Awards

• High Distinction, American University of Beirut (June 2025)

• Dean's Award for Creative Achievement (May 2025)

• Best Final Year Project, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, AUB (May 2025)

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