Director of the State of Washington Water Research Center, Dr. Michael Barber will work on the system performance metrics for the Northwest Advanced Renewables Alliance’s research. He also is a professor in the Washington State University Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and has more than 20 years of experience in hydrology and water resources.

Dr. Barber currently is investigating sediment scour inside vessels from the Department of Energy’s Hanford nuclear vitrification plant, climate change impacts on water quantity and quality, and groundwater modeling of aquifer storage and recover for increasing availability. Since 1983, he has been a faculty member at WSU and Tulane University and worked as a project engineer at KKBNA Consulting Engineers Inc. in Wheat Ridge, Colo.

His professional activities include serving as co-principal investigator in a regional water quality coordination grant with Alaska, Idaho, Oregon and Washington to promote synergistic education, research and extension.

Dr. Barber earned his Ph.D. at the University of Texas at Austin in 1992.