Ruta is PhD student in the Department of Earth Sciences working with Dr. Christa Kelleher. She earned her MS in Environmental Engineering from Syracuse University in 2018. Her research uses hydrologic modeling to better understand how Californian watersheds respond to climate change. In particular, her aim is to analyze how strong seasonal and annual weather shifts may attribute to the shifting importance of key watershed processes. In addition, she is interested in chemical pathways of organic micro-pollutants, which she is analyzing by combining data from hydrological processes and occurrence of emerging contaminants in waterways downstream of agricultural systems.