Dr. Karina Gutierrez-Jurado is passionate about hydro(geo)logy and environmental resource management and a believer in multidisciplinary approaches to complex challenges. With a B.Sc in Ecology from Mexico (2010), an M.Sc in Water Science and Management from the USA (2014), and her PhD in Hydrogeology from Australia (2020), she has built a strong background as an environmental scientist with a global scope to work on a broad set of key environmental and water issues.

Growing up in a small town in arid northern Mexico, Karina has experienced firsthand the dramatic impacts of drought in the economy and living standards of her home State Chihuahua. In a world with increasing water scarcity, Karina's Master and PhD thesis focused on understanding surface water-GW interactions in irrigated valleys (Northern New Mexico, US) and on exploring why and how dryland rivers transition from a dry to a flowing state (South Australia). Currently, Karina is a postdoctoral researcher in Hydrology at Flinders University working on understanding the water use by vegetation of key environmental communities in the River Murray Floodplains in the South Australian Riverlands.