A CUAHSI Board Spotlight with Marco P. Maneta
Posted Feb 11, 2026
Marco P. Maneta, Directory of Flood Modeling, First Street, Inc.
Geosciences Department Faculty Affiliate (formerly Professor of Hydrology), University of Montana
As an academic researcher, my work focused on understanding hydrologic processes across scales and how they interact with natural and socioeconomic systems, particularly forests and agriculture. My research program was highly interdisciplinary, and I was fortunate to collaborate with forest ecologists, agricultural engineers, resource economists, computer scientists, and many others. These collaborations reinforced a central insight: systems that depend on water tend to adapt to long-term climatic averages, but they are often vulnerable to extremes such as floods and droughts. As climate change intensifies the frequency and magnitude of these extremes, the resilience of both ecosystems and human communities is increasingly tested. A key motivation for my transition from academia to industry was the opportunity to move science closer to the organizations that use it, helping to accelerate adaptation and build resilience.
My time in academia also provided the privilege of sustained collaboration with students and colleagues, access to advanced computing resources, and the opportunity to learn and teach modern data and computational tools. From high-performance computing to cloud platforms and early work connecting to remote data streams through REST APIs to the early versions of HydroShare, these experiences proved foundational for my current role. They now enable me to contribute to tools and analyses that influence how consumers, companies, and financial institutions allocate resources in the face of climate risk.
Having worked in both academia and industry, I strongly believe that these communities play complementary and essential roles in addressing today’s environmental challenges. Academic research excels at advancing fundamental and applied science, while the private sector translates those advances into actionable information for decision-makers. Together, they form a science-to-operations pipeline that maximizes societal impact. For students and early-career scientists interested in nontraditional career paths, I encourage developing breadth beyond disciplinary boundaries. Deep technical expertise matters—but so do communication skills, curiosity, and an understanding of the policy, social, and cultural contexts in which scientific solutions must operate. CUAHSI is a great platform to attain this type of broader, impactful education because it enables scientists to work across institutions, disciplines and sectors, and promotes shared standards, open data, and shared workflows to help water professionals translate research into actionable insights.