Jessica Lawson is an environmental engineer by training. Her background includes work on the fate and transport of environmental contaminants, microbial contamination in groundwater, environmental risk assessment, water/wastewater treatment, and mathematical modeling. She's interested in the interface between science and policy, particularly for questions relating to water resources, sustainability, and climate. She holds both a Ph.D. and an M.S.E. in environmental engineering from Johns Hopkins University, as well as a B.S. from Yale in the same discipline. She also has a licence in Geography from Université Paris 8.