Alexandre Erich S. Georges is a Ph.D. candidate in Environmental Engineering at UC Berkeley. His research focuses on the potential and use of natural infrastructure for climate change adaptation in coastal communities in Haiti and the Caribbean. He is the co-founder of Caribbean Coalition at Berkeley, a team of 15 PhD students from 6 departments — with heritage from Jamaica, Haiti, Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the wider Caribbean diaspora. Many of them have loved ones who have been directly affected by the destruction caused by Hurricane Melissa.

Hurricane Melissa Relief — Join Us in Supporting Impacted Caribbean Communities

In the week of October 27th, Category 5 Hurricane Melissa devastated communities across the Caribbean — particularly in Jamaica, Cuba, and Haiti — claiming lives, upending homes and livelihoods, and disrupting access to food, clean water, electricity, and medical care.

UC Berkeley PhD students from the Caribbean and its diaspora — together with allies at Caribbean Coalition at Berkeley and the Berkeley CEE community — are mobilizing their networks and resources to support urgent grassroots relief efforts. Their immediate goal is to raise $20,000 to provide both monetary aid and in-kind donations.

Where Your Support Goes
The Caribbean Coalition at Berkeley is working alongside trusted local partners in severely impacted areas to direct funds toward food, medical supplies, hygiene/menstrual products, and other critical provisions. Local Partners include St. Elizabeth Parish, the Maroon village of Accompong in Jamaica, the Oriente provinces of Cuba (Holguín, Las Tunas), and the southern departments of Haiti (Petit-Goâve, Jacmel). 

Donate Today
Click Here to donate to this important cause and your contribution will directly support relief work on the ground. Thanks for standing with our Caribbean community in this time of urgent need.

Maksymilian Jasiak Presents Cutting-Edge Research at SHMII-13
At the 13th International Conference on Structural Health Monitoring of Intelligent Infrastructure (SHMII-13), hosted by TU Graz in Graz, Austria (Sept 1-5, 2025), Maksymilian Jasiak delivered a compelling presentation on “Water distribution pipeline anomaly detection using distributed acoustic sensing (DAS).” His work — developed in collaboration with Shih‑Hung Chiu, Jaewon Saw, FiberSense (Peter Hubbard) and EBMUD (David Katzev) — demonstrated several key findings:

• DAS can be installed on buried fiber-optic cables to monitor water-distribution pipelines.
• DAS is capable of detecting anomalies in water flow, identifying pressure transients, and locating leaks.
• The deployment context—whether structure-embedded cables or existing telecom fibers, along with cable type and pipe-to-cable spacing—significantly affects the detectability of pipeline signals. 

This innovative research signals exciting potential for leveraging DAS technology to enhance the resilience and monitoring of lifeline infrastructure.

Check out the full article here.

William Tarpeh (M.S. ’13, Ph.D. ’17 Environmental Engineering) has been awarded the prestigious MacArthur Fellowship

We are proud to congratulate Berkeley CEE alumnus William Tarpeh, now an Assistant Professor at Stanford University, who is pioneering innovative technologies to recover valuable resources from wastewater. His work—ranging from electrochemical conversion of nitrogen in urine waste streams to a box-sized electrocatalyst system for ammonia recovery—addresses sustainability at the intersection of chemistry, infrastructure, and environmental impact. As a 2025 MacArthur Fellow, Dr. Tarpeh joins an elite cohort of changemakers recognized for their originality, drive, and potential to influence society for the better.

Check out the full article here.