Alumni Spotlight written by Sofia Sarak
For Marie Rivers ’22, the MEDS program was an opportunity to develop transferable, technical skills – a pivot from her previous work in the drinking water sector. She now uses her skillset to perform geospatial analysis at the National Laboratory of the Rockies, working with a team of analysts to inform an efficient energy transition in the United States.
I had the opportunity to chat with Marie about what drives her in her career, the meaning of environmental data science, and that there are, in fact, a lot of places where the country can install renewable energy infrastructure (whew!).
The following interview was conducted in July 2026. It has been edited for length and clarity.
Can you talk about your current position and what you do on the day-to-day?
I am a Geospatial Research Scientist at the National Laboratory of the Rockies (formerly the National Renewable Energy Lab). In my role, I work with a lot of spatial datasets, looking at resource potential – for wind and solar energy – in different siting scenarios.
We see which locations have the best wind resource or solar resource, and then we factor in a bunch of setting logistics. [Setting logistics can be] physical – including water, steep slopes, and terrain – but also social considerations, like where are people living and where is there built infrastructure. There are also environmental considerations, like endangered species and protected habitats. My work is factoring all of those components to determine where the best place to site renewable energy is.
What programming languages do you work in?
I work mostly with Python. Every once in a while I do some side projects on my own and I use R, and I’m like “Oh yeah, I miss R! R is kind of fun.”
What is your role on your team?
I’m on the geospatial data science team – all of my coworkers are geographers and data scientists. It’s a really fun group of people, really smart and interesting. We collaborate, but a lot of it is independent. We’re not all working on the same projects, but there’s overlap. My role, or anyone else’s role, might be working with the geospatial data for a good chunk of a project. Anywhere from starting with the raw data, transforming it, filtering it, doing all sorts of things to get it workable for whatever the intended use is.
Did you always know you wanted to go into energy infrastructure?
Nope! I was looking over a whole variety of sectors. I knew I wanted to go into a field that contributed positively to the environment and to society. Before the MEDS program I worked as an environmental engineer in the drinking water sector – I always came from an environmental background. I [knew I still] really wanted more of a purpose-driven job.
I wasn’t specifically looking for renewable energy, but it was definitely on the short list of things I was interested in. Coming from a water background, I really appreciated all of the technical components involved in maintaining water infrastructure, in getting clean drinking water from source through pipes and pumps and tanks to people’s houses. You turn your faucet on in the morning and water comes out. You don’t think about where it comes from, but there’s a lot going on behind the scenes. I think of the electrical grid in the same way.
In society, it’s something that everyone needs, but not everyone thinks about it until their lights go out. Especially with electricity, there are more sustainable ways to generate electricity than others. It’s a fun thing to do, to help have a cleaner energy transition.
If you could go back and sit in on one MEDS course again, which would it be, and why?
I feel like the subject that I still have the most to learn in would be machine learning. In class, we just got a taste of what it is, basic models. In my job I haven't had much opportunity to use machine learning, but being aware of the industry, I feel like it’s such an important skill.
Above: Marie Rivers '22 with her dog Lyra, who has been with Marie since before MEDS!
How did your past experiences shape your career goals?
When I left my previous career to go to Bren, I was at a point where I had a lot of very specific, strong technical skills. I did a lot of modeling, but it was modeling that was specific to drinking water systems. I really wanted a broader set of technical skills, and I achieved that at Bren. Right now I work in the energy sector, but I feel like I can take my skills to any other if I need to.
Who is someone, a professor, classmate, mentor, or even a stranger, who has changed the direction of your career, and how?
I had a professor before Bren who would talk about the balance of protecting the environment and public health. I was working on a project that was looking at the impacts of road salts on drinking water, and I would get really into the environmental component. I would model the transport of road salts from the highway to the drainage network to the reservoir, and read up on the health effects of having high levels of sodium in your drinking water. But my professor made me realize that there needs to be a balance – in this case, between road safety and water.
There are endless arguments for protecting the environment for public health. There's the “I love nature” argument, but there’s also “I would like to drink clean water and breathe clean air”. That professor has helped me keep a big picture of the reality of the world we live in.
If your work could accomplish one thing in the next 10 years, what would you want it to be?
Definitely increasing the deployment of renewable energy in a strategic way, not just: “Let’s just put it over there”. Being smart about it from a social perspective, environmental perspective, and economic perspective.
Do you find your job difficult? Is it difficult to find places to install renewable energy?
A lot of projects are looking at very high-level, national-scale studies. So yeah, there are definitely places to build renewable energy infrastructure.
What’s something about your work that would surprise someone who has never worked in environmental data science?
Starting out MEDS, I would have thought that environmental data has to do with animals and plants and different species and concentrations of pollutants or contaminants and that kind of thing. But the variety of datasets I work with – they’re not all environmental. There’s a lot of social datasets, a lot of economic datasets, a lot on existing infrastructure. It’s really a variety. Especially with the spatial data, there’s just no end to what can be conveyed.
Do you have any pets?
I have a six-year-old black lab. I brought her with me to Santa Barbara, and she fell absolutely in love with the beach. I had to buy a paddle board while I was out there and I got to take her paddle boarding. Her name is Lyra.