Alyssa Offutt

Prior to her current position, Alyssa worked as environmental engineer specializing in contaminant fate and transport. She conducted site investigations, litigation support, and remedial design in a range of surface water, sediment, and groundwater environments. She also served on the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources Contaminant Sediment Advisory Group and was a co-lead author to the biological test methods section of the ASTM International Method WK54455 “Standard Guide for Selection and Application of Analytical Procedures Used During Sediment Corrective Action.”

Alyssa holds a M.S. in Environmental and Water Resources Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin, master’s degrees from a joint Water Cooperation and Diplomacy program between the U.N. mandated University for Peace (Costa Rica), IHE Delft, and Oregon State University (United States), and a B.S. in Civil Engineering from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. She is also licensed as a Professional Engineer (PE) in the State of Illinois.

Alyssa’s research focuses on the hydro-politics of transboundary water quality. She analyses how patterns of water conflict and cooperation evolve around water quality at both international and domestic scales. With a global approach, she compares transboundary interactions to chemical datasets and alternate lines of evidence to assess drivers of conflict and cooperation. She then uses select case studies to investigate interactions of scale that result from the effectiveness and equity of transboundary governance. Her research applies lenses of water quality risk and environmental justice to understand this resulting human response, and she conducts her research in the Tigris-Euphrates, Laurentian Great Lakes, and Danube Basins. Using a multidisciplinary approach, Alyssa’s research seeks to strengthen the understanding of water quality interactions to bolster response to water quality degradation in transboundary systems.