Biography

Nigel Quinn leads the HydroEcological Engineering Advanced Decision Support research group (HEADS) at Berkeley National Laboratory which specializes in the development of environmental decision support systems to improve understanding and find solutions to complex water resources and water quality problems in California and world-wide. Born in Belfast, Northern Ireland he spent his early years in Zimbabwe and returned to the United Kingdom for college. After working in industry building irrigation systems in England and in Africa upon graduation he continued his career in the United States as a research and teaching assistant then instructor at Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa, where he obtained his MS and as a teaching asistant and General Electric Fellow at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. After graduating with his PhD Nigel continued as a Research Associate at Cornell on loan to the San Joaquin Valley Drainage Program, a multi-agency planning team based in Sacramento, California. He was recruited as a Staff Scientist at Berkeley National Laboratory in 1990 at the end of his research contract with the Drainage Program. He has worked at Berkeley National Laboratory for the past 18 years and holds adjunct faculty appointments at California State University Fresno where he is an Adjunct Research Professor in the Department of Plant Science and at the University of California, Merced where he is an Associate Research Engineer.