Rate My Professor Pin Shuai

Pin Shuai is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Utah Water Research Laboratory at Utah State University. As a groundwater hydrologist, he specializes in groundwater-surface water interactions, nutrient and contaminant transport, hydrological modeling, and watershed biogeochemistry. His research examines hydrological and biogeochemical processes at the aquatic-terrestrial interface from bedrock to canopy top in watersheds, considering impacts from human activities, land use, and climate change. Shuai employs model-data integrative approaches, combining field observations, laboratory experiments, remote sensing, numerical models, high-performance computing, and machine learning to quantify flow and transport of heat, nutrients, and contaminants. He advocates for open-source and reproducible scientific research, developing tools like Watershed Workflow for parameterizing hyperresolution hydrologic models.

Shuai earned his PhD in Geology from Texas A&M University in 2017, with a dissertation on the fate and transport of nutrients and contaminants under groundwater-surface water interactions. He received his MS in Water Resources Engineering from Wuhan University in 2013, focusing on groundwater recharge estimation, and his BS from the same institution in 2011. Before joining Utah State University in 2022, he worked as an Earth Scientist at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory from 2020 to 2022 and as a Postdoctoral Research Associate there from 2017 to 2020. During his time at PNNL, he contributed to projects such as the River Corridor Hydrobiogeochemistry Science Focus Area and ExaSheds, advancing watershed modeling and machine learning applications. Shuai has published extensively in journals including Water Resources Research, Hydrology and Earth System Sciences, and Environmental Modelling & Software. Key publications include 'Dam Operations and Subsurface Hydrogeology Control Dynamics of Hydrologic Exchange Flows in a Regulated River Reach' (Water Resources Research, 2019), a top downloaded paper, and 'Watershed Workflow: a toolset for parameterizing data-intensive, hyperresolution hydrologic models' (Environmental Modeling & Software, 2022). He has led or co-led funded projects from DOE, including Laboratory Directed Research and Development grants. His work has earned over 690 citations. Awards include the 2019 Honorable Mention Paper from the International Association of Chinese Youth in Water Sciences and graduate fellowships from Texas A&M University and Wuhan University.