Lisa Lee Email & Phone Number

Montreal, Qc, Ca

Montreal, Canada Area

Greater Boston Area

My work at CDM Smith involves surface water hydraulics and hydrology, coastal processes and engineering, flood hazard mapping, groundwater modeling, and collection systems modeling. I chiefly use modeling software such as ADH, ADCIRC, WAM, SWAN, DYNSYSTEM, HEC-RAS, HEC-HMS, and SewerGems.A large amount of my work involved producing inundation maps and RISK map products used by FEMA and other jurisdictions/municipalities to provide risk exposure forecasting. I’ve worked on projects… Show more My work at CDM Smith involves surface water hydraulics and hydrology, coastal processes and engineering, flood hazard mapping, groundwater modeling, and collection systems modeling. I chiefly use modeling software such as ADH, ADCIRC, WAM, SWAN, DYNSYSTEM, HEC-RAS, HEC-HMS, and SewerGems.A large amount of my work involved producing inundation maps and RISK map products used by FEMA and other jurisdictions/municipalities to provide risk exposure forecasting. I’ve worked on projects involving the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the Great Lakes, the Byram River Basin, the Three Rivers region in Pennsylvania, Paulina Lake, among others. Types of work performed include storm surge and wave modeling, hydraulics and hydrology, inundation mapping, dam break/removal simulation, transect analysis, and 2D river flow modeling.I frequently worked on projects related to coastal flood hazard analysis for counties bordering the Great Lakes within FEMA’s Region V. Most recently, I worked on a coupled model using SWAN and ADCIRC, which was run parallelized on the Stokes supercomputer cluster at the University of Central Florida. SMS was used as the front-end software package. I worked on several groundwater projects involving analyzing the transport of contaminants in groundwater. I worked on identifying potential contamination of MTBE (Methyl Tertiary-Butyl Ether) in aquifers in the Borough of Queens, while also calibrating the DYN model by testing for known sources of MTBE. I also assisted on our Baldwin Park, CA project by generating input files to be used in the development of a new function in DYNPLOT designed to create contour map slices, and producing visualizations of the modeling output in GIS. I also developed and modified grids to be used in other groundwater projects.I also have experience working with modeling of collection systems in SewerGems. This involved importing GIS data for system components (eg – pipes and manholes) and developing and analyzing system load. Show less

My graduate work focused on the study of double white dwarf binary star systems. These systems are of interest in the astrophysics community as possible progenitors of Type Ia supernovae. One theory suggests that these supernovae occur in a system where each white dwarf has a mass smaller than the Chandrasekhar mass limit, but the total system mass is above this value. If the two white dwarfs merge, the new object would have a mass exceeding this limit, and a Type Ia supernova would… Show more My graduate work focused on the study of double white dwarf binary star systems. These systems are of interest in the astrophysics community as possible progenitors of Type Ia supernovae. One theory suggests that these supernovae occur in a system where each white dwarf has a mass smaller than the Chandrasekhar mass limit, but the total system mass is above this value. If the two white dwarfs merge, the new object would have a mass exceeding this limit, and a Type Ia supernova would result.These systems are also of great interest in the gravitational wave community as they would be a source of gravitational waves as the stars slowly spiral in toward each other. In our group, we studied the effect of the mass ratio on the stability of the mass transfer, once the process was started. Systems that have unstable mass transfer would be candidates for Type Ia supernovae, while systems with stable mass transfer would be sources of continuous gravitational wave radiation.In many models run by our group, we witnessed a distortion of the accretor. When these distortions exist, the equatorial region of the star appears to move through a series of geometric shape progressions (triangular shape into a square shape and then to a pentagon and so forth). It was believed that these distortions were caused by resonance conditions, and that they could have a stabilizing effect on the mass transfer. My work while on the IGERT program was to study these distortions.In order to show that a double white dwarf system is undergoing stable mass transfer, the model needs to be run for a large number orbits (30 or more). As the model runs, the system's center of mass gradually begins to move away from the center of the computational grid. If one of the stars contacts the edge of the grid, the model no longer produces sensible results. My work while at LSU involved modifying the code to counteract the motion of the system's center of mass. Show less

While working on my graduate studies at Louisiana State University, I also taught and administered physics labs and recitation sections. Teaching the physics lab involved meeting with each class (approximately 24 students) once a week for a three-hour lab session. The first fifteen minutes for each lab session would be an oral presentation on the lesson to be learned that day, which I prepared prior to each lab session. In the frequent case of insufficient laboratory procedure documentation, I… Show more While working on my graduate studies at Louisiana State University, I also taught and administered physics labs and recitation sections. Teaching the physics lab involved meeting with each class (approximately 24 students) once a week for a three-hour lab session. The first fifteen minutes for each lab session would be an oral presentation on the lesson to be learned that day, which I prepared prior to each lab session. In the frequent case of insufficient laboratory procedure documentation, I also would modify or rewrite the lab lesson procedures to allow students to complete the given assignment within the time allotted, while also helping to reinforce the principles and concepts intended to be conveyed in the lab class. The remaining time would be used in helping students perform the lab, answering questions, troubleshooting/fixing laboratory equipment, and assisting students with understanding of the concepts involved in each lesson.I kept office hours to assist students with questions on their lab and homework assignments, and I also served regular tutoring sessions in a designated study area to provide assistance and support to students in any Physics class. I also gave recitation lessons for classes approximately once a week, where I would give oral presentations on a topic relevant to the lesson plan assigned by the instructor. Off-campus, I was responsible for the writing of these presentations, the grading of lab reports, and for establishing a grading rubric to measure them by. This task helped me to build my own writing skills, as I was able to see what elements were necessary to go into such a report or a similar writing assignment, and I also learned common omissions and errors. Show less

While at the US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC), I worked at the Coastal & Hydraulics Laboratory (CHL) in the Estuarine Division. I designed and ran modeling simulations for multiple projects using ADH (ADaptive Hydraulics) and RMA2 (Resource Management Associates). ADH and RMA2 are used by the Army Corps of Engineers to model non-reactive water flow for a large number of applications, including maintenance and construction of vessel… Show more While at the US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC), I worked at the Coastal & Hydraulics Laboratory (CHL) in the Estuarine Division. I designed and ran modeling simulations for multiple projects using ADH (ADaptive Hydraulics) and RMA2 (Resource Management Associates). ADH and RMA2 are used by the Army Corps of Engineers to model non-reactive water flow for a large number of applications, including maintenance and construction of vessel navigation channels, modeling the effects of dam and levee failures, and the restoration and preservation of wetlands. The simulations are run in a massively parallel configuration on a set of high-performance computing clusters (2000+ CPU systems supplied by ERDC DSRC), and the output data is visualized using SMS (Surface water Modeling System).During my time there, I worked as a project modeler, creating hydrodynamic models to solve a number of non-reactive flow problems. One of my first projects involved the use of ADH to simulate a dambreak event. Traditional dambreak simulations have involved a one-dimensional model, but the Army Corps of Engineers required a model which could function in two dimensions and simulate the presence of obstructions and hydraulic structures. ADH also features adaptive meshing, allowing the model to determine what areas require higher resolution and model them accordingly. The adaptive meshing also speeds model development time by reducing the need for precision in the initial mesh design, as ADH can refine the mesh as required during simulation processing. ADH is also designed to run in highly parallelized computing clusters, such as the systems available through DSRC.Other projects I worked on while at the Corps involved studying the effects of modifying a vessel navigation channel, wetlands restoration in the Everglades, and modifying ADH to incorporate the effects of sea vessels in waterflow modeling. Show less

Ms, Physics - Computational Fluid Dynamics

Bs, Physics

Activities and Societies: Society of Physics Students American Association of Physics Teachers Society of Women Engineers

Bse, Aerospace Engineering

Activities and Societies: American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Society of Women Engineers