Lisa Alvarez-Cohen

- Chair of Civil & Environmental Engineering
- Fred and Claire Sauer Professor
- Faculty Scientist, Ecology Dept., Earth Sciences Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory


Mailing Address:
Civil and Environmental Engineering
760 Davis Hall
University of California
Berkeley, CA 94720-1710

Email:
chair@ce.berkeley.edu

 Phone:
(510) 643-8739

Fax:
(510) 643-5264

Biography

Lisa Alvarez-Cohen is the Fred and Claire Sauer Professor, and Chair of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at UC Berkeley.  She received her Bachelors Degree in Engineering and Applied Science from Harvard University and her M.S. and Ph.D. in Environmental Engineering and Science from Stanford University. She is a fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology and a member of the National Academy of Engineering. She is on the Editorial Advisory Board of Environmental Science and Technology and is an Associate Editor of Environmental Engineering Science. 

Teaching and Research

Professor Alvarez-Cohen teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in environmental microbiology, environmental engineering, biological process engineering, and hazardous waste management. She is the co-author of the undergraduate textbook, Environmental Engineering Science.

Her research areas include environmental microbiology and ecology, biotransformation and fate of environmental contaminants, nutrient cycling in soils, and innovative molecular and isotopic techniques for studying microbial ecology of complex communities. Specifically, her research focuses on the application of omics-based molecular tools and isotopic techniques to understand and optimize the bioremediation of emerging and conventional environmental contaminants by naturally occurring microorganisms and to facilitate beneficial carbon cycling in the environment. Bioremediation and nutrient cycling are processes that rely upon complex mixed microbial communities that interact to catalyze important reaction pathways. 

Alvarez-Cohen’s lab takes a systems-based approach to understand communities as holistic units of interacting species, capable of performing environmentally relevant reactions.

Alvarez-Cohen Research Group

LAC Group 2011

 


Ongoing research projects include:

Professor Alvarez-Cohen co-authored a textbook entitled Environmental Engineering Science, available from John Wiley and Sons. Prof. Alvarez-Cohen, along with Prof. Bill Nazaroff, developed this text through using experience from teaching CE 111, a junior-level undergraduate environmental engineering class at UC Berkeley.

Selected Recent Publications

  • National Research Council Committee on Metagenomics (LA-C committee member) 2007, “The New Science of Metagenomics: Revealing the Secrets of our Microbial Planet,” National Academy Press, Washington DC.

Links