Admin Husic
Biography
Dr. Husic is an associate professor in the Environmental and Water Resources Engineering group at the Occoquan Watershed Monitoring Laboratory in Northern Virginia.
Areas of Interest
Dr. Husic's research group investigates how human activities and a changing climate alter the transport and connectivity of water, sediment, and nutrients across Earth’s surface.
Operating under the philosophy that if something exists in a river, he ought to know about it, Dr. Husic employs a highly interdisciplinary approach to solve vexing challenges in water resources. His team utilizes high-frequency aquatic sensors to monitor critical water quality parameters and build robust, long-term environmental datasets. To translate these complex observations into actionable scientific knowledge, his lab leverages advanced numerical models, geochemical tracers, deep learning, and explainable AI to better predict watershed dynamics and pollution transport under changing environmental conditions.
A central pillar of Dr. Husic’s work is understanding how global change, hydrology, and historical landscape modifications intersect to impact society. By bridging the gap between advanced hydrologic modeling and complex human-water systems, his team’s overarching goal is to ensure the equitable access and security of water for all people.
- Ph.D. in Civil Engineering, University of Kentucky, 2018
- M.S. in Civil Engineering, University of Kentucky, 2015
- B.S. in Civil Engineering, University of Kentucky, 2014
- Virginia Tech, 2024-present, Associate Professor in Civil & Environmental Engineering
- University of Kansas, 2018 - 2024, Assistant Professor of Civil, Environmental, and Architectural Engineering
- NSF CAREER Awardee, 2024 - 2029
- NSF Track-4 Research Fellow, 2022 - 2024
- National Science Foundation: CAREER: Dynamic connectivity: a research and educational frontier for sustainable environmental management under climate and land use uncertainty, 2024-2029 (PI)
- Loudoun Water: The Broad Run Watershed Monitoring Program in Loudon County, 2025-2027 (PI)
- National Science Foundation: Collaborative Research: Can Human-Induced Turbidity Currents Enable Sustainability of Freshwater Reservoirs? 2023-2026 (PI)
- National Science Foundation: Collaborative Research: GCR: Common Pool Resource Theory as a Scalable Framework for Catalyzing Stakeholder-Driven Solutions to the Freshwater Salinization Syndrome, 2023-2026 (PI, replacing Dr. Gomez-Velez)
- Kansas Water Office: A statewide inventory of the dominant reservoir sedimentation sources to inform targeted watershed conservation and upstream mitigation practices, 2024-2026 (PI)
- National Science Foundation: RII Track-4: Assessing Dynamic Connectivity of Streams and Wetlands across Spatial and Human Gradients with Deep Learning, 2022-2024 (PI)
- National Science Foundation Kansas EPSCoR: Influences of urbanization on the tipping points of benthic algae mat growth, decay, and toxin production, 2021-2022 (PI)
- Johnson County Public Works: Identifying the Source of Sediment for Targeted Best Management Practices in Urban and Rural Areas of Johnson County, 2021-2024 (PI)
- Golden, H., Christensen, J., McMillan, H., Kelleher, C., Lane, C., Husic, A., Li, L., Ward, A., Hammond, J., Seybold, E., Jaeger, K., Zimmer, M., Sando, R., Jones, N., Segura, C., Mahoney, T., Price, A., and Cheng, F. (2025). Advancing the Science of Headwater Streamflow for Global Water Protection. Nature Water, 3(1), 16–26.
- Grant, S., Bhide, S., Spiesman, A., Misra, S., Rippy, M., Galik, C., Birkland, T., Schenk, T., Kaushal, S., Vikesland, P., Knocke, W., Hotchkiss, E., Husic, A., Post, H., Coneway, C., Prelewicz, G., Owsenek, B., Steglitz, B., Laursen, B., and Rowles, K. (2026). Social-ecological-technological drivers of freshwater salinization in the Occoquan Reservoir, United States. Communications Earth & Environment, 7, 133.
- Husic, A., Hammond, J., Price, A., and Roundy, J. (2025). Interrogating process deficiencies in large-scale hydrologic models with interpretable machine learning. Hydrology and Earth System Sciences, 29(18), 4457–4472.
- Pandit, A., Golden, H., Christensen, J., Lane, C. R., and Husic, A. (2025). Deep learning prediction and interpretation of riverine nitrate export across the Mississippi River Basin. Water Resources Research, 61(8), e2024WR039207.
- Pandit, A., Hogan, S., Mahoney, D., Ford, W., Fox, J., Wellen, C., and Husic, A. (2025). Establishing performance criteria for evaluating watershed-scale sediment and nutrient models at fine temporal scales. Water Research, 274, 123156.
- Zarnaghsh, A., Kelly, M., Burgin, A., and Husic, A. (2024). Revealing nitrate uptake and dispersion dynamics using high-frequency sensors and two-dimensional modeling in a large river system. Advances in Water Resources, 187, 104693.
- Michalek. A., Villarini, G., and Husic, A. (2023). Climate change projected to impact structural hillslope connectivity at the global scale. Nature Communications, 14, 6788.