Andrea Rinaldo
Neil Armstrong Distinguished Visiting Professor (2019-2021)
Andrea Rinaldo is a professor emeritus, honorary professor at the School of Architecture, Civil and Environmental Engineering (ENAC), at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland. He is the former professor of hydrology and water resources and director of the Laboratory of Ecohydrology.
Rinaldo received his PhD (1983) in civil engineering at Purdue University. He is world-renowned as an authority and co-founder of the field of ecohydrology and for his theory of self-organized fractal river networks and efficient transport networks. He is a foreign member of the US National Academy of Engineering, the U.S. National Academy of Science, and the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, and the recipient of the Horton Award from the American Geophysical Union and the Dalton Medal from the European Geoscience Unions. In 2023, he received The Stockholm Water Prize, the world’s most prestigious water award.
Dr. Rinaldo's Impact
- “Dr. Rinaldo attended PhD thesis defenses, and the input he provided was a key step in the students’ subsequent research on ecological dynamics of wetlands and migration and survival of amphibians, a keystone species.”
- “His bold vision for combining data-model synthesis using large-scale, long-term studies linking climate controls on river hydrological dynamics to human and ecological communities was crucial in my launching new collaborations in subsurface, groundwater, river and ecological dynamics.”
-Suresh Rao, professor emeritus in the Lyles School of Civil and Construction Engineering and Satish Ukkusuri, the Hubert and Audrey Kleasen Professor in Civil Engineering
Rinaldo worked with faculty members from the Lyles School of Civil and Construction Engineering and was hosted by Suresh Rao, professor emeritus of civil engineering, and Satish Ukkusuri, the Hubert and Audrey Kleasen Professor in Civil Engineering.