Jennifer Skerker

Jenny Skerker is a Ph.D. candidate in the civil and environmental engineering department and a member of the Fletcher Lab. Her research focuses on incorporating principles of equity and environmental justice into water resources computational decision-support tools. Her current research seeks to explicitly incorporate affordability into utility-level planning tools as part of the human right to water, which decrees that everyone should have access to safe, affordable drinking water. She studies how affordability is further challenged under drought and future climate change-driven hydrologic scenarios, and develops tools for selection of infrastructure and policy measures that improve household affordability and resilience under hydroclimate variability. She is applying this work to the City of Santa Cruz and also East Palo Alto with the support of Nuestra Casa, a non-profit focused on empowering communities.

Before coming to Stanford, Jenny was a water resources engineer for three years. She worked on a range of stormwater, site remediation and bridge development projects, as well as managed and mentored more junior employees. Jenny received her undergraduate degree in environmental engineering from Tufts University where she conducted research on traffic-related air pollution from the Central Artery/Tunnel in Boston, MA. She was a recipient of the Cataldo Scholarship, Edge Engineering Prize, Mary Gunther Memorial Scholarship and William P. Morse Award. Jenny is currently a co-lead for Engineering Students for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, where she also runs a volunteering program with College Track in East Palo Alto. In her free time she enjoys running - completing her third marathon in December 2022 - exploring the Bay Area and spending time with friends and family.