Research Assistant
211 Benjamin Hall Interdisciplinary Research Building
Applied Physics Laboratory
University of Washington
Seattle, WA 98195-2700
Email: mguerrap@uw.edu
I earned both, my bachelor and master degrees in Civil Engineering and Hydraulics at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile in 2010. After working at the same university as a research engineer in coastal engineering projects, mostly related to tsunamis and marine energy, I decided that I needed to expand my knowledge and horizons, and moved forward to pursue a PhD in Civil and Environmental Engineering at UW.
I moved with my husband to Seattle, WA., from Santiago, Chile, on August 2014, leaving family and friends behind to live a new and fascinating life abroad. I love my country; I love being Chilean and Latin American, but as a Fulbright fellow I also love to share my culture and experience a life immerse in a different one.
In the past three years I have been working with Jim Thomson on the hydrodynamics of tidal channels and rivers suitable for hydrokinetic energy extraction. I work with field measurements of turbulence aiming to understand how turbulence behaves in these energetic flows. At the same time, I explore the effects that hydrokinetic energy extraction has on this behavior through field measurements taken in the Kvichak river (Alaska) after ORPC RivGen turbine was deployed, and connected to the local electricity grid, in the summer of 2015.
Publications
Guerra, M., Cienfuegos, R., Thomson, J., & Suarez, L. (2017) Tidal energy resource characterization in Chacao Channel, Chile. International Journal of Marine Energy.
Guerra, M., & Thomson, J. (2017). Turbulence measurements from 5-beam acoustic Doppler current profilers. Journal of Atmospheric and Oceanic Technology.
Guerra, M., Cienfuegos, R., Escauriaza, C., Marche, F., & Galaz, J. (2014). Modeling rapid flood propagation over natural terrains using a well-balanced scheme. Journal of Hydraulic Engineering, 140(7), 04014026.