Mike Talbot

Mike Talbot

PhD Candidate, Hydrologic Science & Engineering

About Me

Hello! I’m Mike, an engineer and hydrologist currently working on my PhD in the Hydrologic Science & Engineering program at Colorado State University, advised by Dr. Frances Davenport in the Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering. Until I decided to reenter academia in January of 2024, I worked as a Water Resources Engineer with Emmons & Olivier Resources (EOR) for 10 years and continue to provide guidance and technical feedback on some hydrologic modeling, watershed planning, and web development projects.

My current research interests stem from my experience building and using hydrologic and hydraulic models for a variety of purposes across a wide range of spatial scales, and the challenges I encountered along the way. Within the framework of large-sample hydrology, I apply statistical methods, deep learning models, and explainability techniques to explore the estimation and prediction of hydrologic extremes. I’m particularly interested in questions like:

  • How good are machine learning models are predicting streamflow extremes?
  • What methods can we use to improve their skill at the tails of the streamflow distribution?
  • What can we learn from them about the principles of hydrologic science?

My work experience

While at EOR, I worked on a large number of projects ranging from engineering design support to regional-scale watershed planning. Some notable projects include:

My educational experience

I started my PhD in January of 2024 after acknowledging that performing academic research remained both my primary passion. Prior to that, I received my M.S. in Bioproducts & Biosystems Science, Engineering, and Management in 2019 and my B.B.A.E. in Biosystems and Agricultural Engineering (later renamed to Bioproducts and Biosystems Engineering) in 2009, both from the University of Minnesota. My M.S. advisor was the incredible Dr. Gary Sands and my thesis was titled Comparison of Evapotranspiration Estimation Methods and Implications for Water Balance Model Parameterization in the Midwestern United States.

My intellectual communities

I’m continually hovering at the crossroads between many disciplines such as computer science, data science, GIS, civil engineering, hydrology, and integrated flood management. Consequently, I’ve long been adept at making connections and integrating ideas from one field into another, perhaps at the expense of deep specialized knowledge in any one of them. This is one of the main motivators for pursuing my PhD: to develop a profound understanding of hydrology and its evolutionary history as a scientific discipline.