Gabriel is a licensed architect based in Massachusetts. He has brought the project from the initial idea through multiple awards and grants to its present NSF-funded R&D activities and strong community links. Gabriel is active in local politics and advocacy in the Boston area, including the discourse on city-wide adaptation to climate change. He teaches the longstanding Architecture of Boston course at MassArt, which connects cooperative infrastructure history with the future of climate resilience. Growing up on Cape Cod, Gabriel has been a sailor since he was 5 years old. Other current ARCH CIRA projects include building a geothermal greenhouse for an urban farm, restoring a historic 1886 Black church, and working with The Architecture Lobby’s Coop Network group.

Julia is an assistant professor in the Civil and Environmental Engineering department at Northeastern University. Her lab, the Coastal Urban Resilience and Environmental Solutions (CURES) lab, leverages field observations, numerical models, and targeted lab experiments to investigate how waves and tidal currents impact natural and urban shorelines. Prior to joining Northeastern, Julia was a postdoctoral associate at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, where she worked on sand-based natural solutions for the sinking Dutch coastline. scientific experience combining field, lab, and numerical experiments brings high-level hydrology and coastal simulation capabilities to the team. Julia was receiving her PhD from the MIT-WHOI joint Program in 2018 when she joined the Emerald Tutu team as a founding member.

Louiza graduated from Northeastern University in 2021 with a degree in Environmental Engineering. As a student she was involved in many engineering- and community-focused activities including research on the ability of constructed wetlands to improve water quality. Louiza grew up in Cleveland, Ohio bordering both Lake Erie and the Cuyahoga River where issues of water quality are ever-present in public discourse. She joined the Emerald Tutu in 2021, bringing her project leadership experience as well as industry experience with constructed wetlands and their impact on natural environments.

Noa grew up in Cambridge, MA, and studied engineering, sustainable food systems, and coastal marine science at Smith College. She has worked at NOAA Fisheries, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, and the U.S. Geological Survey on a variety of estuarine and coastal sediment transport projects, before joining The Emerald Tutu in early 2023. Noa is a salt marsh enthusiast, an avid question-asker, and ranks kale as her favorite field snack.

Nick is an assistant professor of Climate Science at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. His research combines theory, numerical modeling and observations to understand the changing circulation of Earth’s atmosphere, and study the climate system holistically in order to better predict how it will respond to rising CO2 concentrations. He leads the development of network scale models for the Emerald Tutu to study how a floating biomass network can be used to attenuate wave energy. Nick was a postdoctoral associate at MIT (2017-19) when he joined the Emerald Tutu team as a founding member.