CEE Ph.D. Candidate Madison Galusha Participates in National CASE Workshop
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Ph.D. candidate Madison Galusha of the UMass Amherst Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) Department was one of four campus graduate students who took part in the national workshop on Catalyzing Advocacy in Science and Engineering (CASE) in Washington, D.C, this April. The CASE workshop, organized by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), is designed to train science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) students from across the country to play their part in the interaction between science and federal policy through hands-on training sessions on how to communicate their research to lawmakers.
Each year the UMass Amherst Office of Professional Development supports several campus students to attend the CASE workshop and represent the university.
Ultimately, the experience is designed to develop a mutual understanding between student researchers and politicians, with an emphasis on empowering students with the ability to convey the story of their research. One of the key objectives of the CASE workshop is to expose student researchers to functions within government and how their activism might inform the rationale behind decisions at a policy level.
As Galusha explained about her CASE experience, “I had the honor to be one of the representatives for [UMass Amherst] in Washington, D.C., this week at the AAAS [CASE] workshop. We learned all about how science is funded, how we can be advocates for our work, and how science can inform policy. On the last day we went to the Hill and put it into practice. I spoke with representatives from both Massachusetts and my home state of Nebraska. I got to share my work in water-resources engineering and learn about the work of other Ph.D. students at the conference.”
Galusha studies water resources and climate resilience and says she is “driven to educate on and reduce climate risk.”
Galusha is doing research on variability, risk, and sustainable adaptations in hydro-climatological and human systems. “I work with communities and use climate and hydrology models to help sustain water supply under future climate and explore ideas to improve resilience,” she said. “I am motivated to educate on the environment around us and apply practical solutions to complex problems.”
The CASE workshop educated Galusha on the fundamentals of communicating her research on water resources, climate resilience, and climate risk to lawmakers and informing them how their work in Congress can benefit the nation and the world, both now and in the future.
Galusha received her B.E. in Civil Engineering from the University of Nebraska in Lincoln. Before coming to UMass Amherst, she also worked for almost two-and-a-half years as a Water/Wastewater Engineering Student Intern at Olsson Engineering in Nebraska and for four months as an Undergraduate Research Assistant for the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.
The 2026 CASE Workshop attendees earned their selection through a highly competitive application process and were sponsored by the UMass Amherst Graduate School, the College of Natural Sciences, and the Riccio College of Engineering. Since 2014, the Office of Professional Development has helped more than 30 UMass Amherst graduate students attend the CASE workshop and subsequent meetings on the Hill, in collaboration with partners at AAAS, Tremont Strategies Group, and Boston University Federal Relations.