LSU Student Receives NSF Grant to Study Water Management and Resiliency in the Netherlands

LSU student Kelli Moran is one of 14 in the nation to receive a National Science Foundation (NSF) Grant that supports graduate student study in the Netherlands. Moran is a doctoral candidate in the College of the Coast & Environment.

This $399,718 grant awarded to The Water Institute and the University of New Orleans supports three groups of students over the next three years for two-week educational programs in water management and resiliency in the Netherlands. The program, which will begin its first session this summer, will include work with Deltares, Delft University of Technology and Utrecht University where students will integrate classroom training, field site visits and hands-on instruction in numerical modeling techniques using Delft3D and flume lab experiments.

“The Netherlands and Louisiana are very similar in that they have some of the most engineered coastlines in the world. By exchanging information with the experts there, in addition to the amazing experts at LSU, my research will enable us to better manage the delicate coastlines and ecosystems along the Gulf Coast as well as abroad,” Moran said.

Moran studies geological oceanography with her major professor, Kevin Xu, director of the Coastal Studies Institute and associate professor in the Department of Oceanography & Coastal Sciences. She loves working in the field and has performed research on a dredge pit on Ship Shoal, Louisiana; in Terrebonne Bay analyzing the last 10,000 years of climate change and sea level rise; and in an 60,000-year-old underwater cypress forest off the Alabama coast.

According to Moran, the opportunities she received at LSU afforded her the right skillset that she needed to qualify for this exciting grant. “Dr. Xu, LSU, and the College of the Coast & Environment really gave me an opportunity to thrive and do what I love to do. It was the right major professor, the right time, and the right research projects. I get to work with cutting-edge technology and do some of the coolest research that I didn’t even know existed before starting at LSU. I’m looking forward to expanding my skillset and bringing back new ideas and perspectives when I return from the Netherlands,” Moran said.