Romina Díaz Gómez

Romina Díaz Gómez is a researcher with the SEI US Water Program with experience in both California and Latin America. Her work primarily focuses on developing spatial water resource modelling for vulnerable basins using remote sensing data and machine learning.

Her experience in California is focused on using remote sensing and geographic information systems (GIS) analysis to examine rivers and the environments around them by combining mapping substrate and riparian vegetation from Lidar and drone data with machine learning techniques. She was a postdoctoral scholar from the Watershed Hydrology, Geomorphology, and Ecohydraulic program at UC Davis, under the direction of Dr. Gregory Pasternack, where she honed her skills in machine learning processes. Furthermore, she was a postdoctoral scholar at the Water Management Lab at UC Davis, under the direction of Dr. Samuel Sandoval Solis, where she honed her expertise on interdisciplinary water research, collaborative literature review platform design (WateReview) and science communication.

She holds a Ph.D. in biological science at the National University of Tucumán, Argentina, supported by a National Scientific and Technical Research Council CONICET Argentina fellowship. She specializes in remote sensing and GIS applied to watersheds management. During her doctorate, she analyzed the impact of global change (climate change, land use and cover change) on the environmental vulnerability (flooding) in subtropical basins using hydrological simulation modelling.

While she was a visiting professor in Mexico, Romina conducted research on wetlands dynamics and hydrological ecosystem services using remote sensing and spatial explicit models. She also offered postgraduate educational training. Her research interests include advancing spatial models and remote sensing technologies for integrated watershed management that supports data-driven decision-making.