I am an environmental engineer advising ridge to reef conservation projects in Hawaii and Palmyra Atoll for The Nature Conservancy. I focus on green infrastructure solutions to mitigating sediment, nutrients and pollutants from watersheds that affect coastal water quality. Recent projects include monitoring the effects of a native Hawaiian restoration for a 200-acre wetland in windward O'ahu, partnering with the USGS on erosion control management recommendations on Hawai'i island, and developing quality assurance documents for a large-scale citizen science water quality project in collaboration with the Department of Health.

I am more and more interested in the role different types of vegetation play in regulating our watersheds water quantity and quality.

In my spare time, I run Nalo Meli Honey and keep urban bee hives in Honolulu.

I began my PhD at University of Hawaii at Manoa in the Department of Oceanography with the intention of researching ridge to reef processes, and exploring the link between watershed management and coastal ecosystem health. My initial focus and projects were in chemical oceanography, under guidance from Gary McMurtry and Kathleen Ruttenberg.

To complete my dissertation, I switched to the Department of Tropical Plant and Soil Sciences under Dr. Russell Yost . This allowed me to build an interdisciplinary committee from throughout the university, including Dr. Kirsten Oleson in Natural Resource and Environmental Management, Dr. Roger Babcock in Civil and Environmental Engineering, Dr. Ross Sutherland in Geography, and Dr. Aly El-Kadi in Geology and Geophysics.

I earned my BS at MIT in Electrical Science and Engineering, with a focus on semiconductor physics with Dr. Bulovic. I continued to work in the semiconductor field as a contractor for Intel and Texas Instruments in San Jose, CA, until moving to Nepal in 2004. Following a six month period teaching environment and English language to middle school students in a rural village, I moved to The Bahamas and worked as a researcher and instructor at The Island School , part of the Cape Eleuthera Institute.

I moved to Waimanalo, O'ahu, in 2007 to work at Oceanic Institute and complete a MSc from Cornell University. My master's thesis was about growing microalgae at scale to feed the larval fish that would end up in fishponds like He'eia.

Kim A. Falinski
Water Resource Research Center
University of Hawaii at Manoa
1000 Pope Rd
Honolulu, HI 96822