KAUST Inauguration Symposium Speaker

Wolfgang Kinzelbach

Wolfgang Kinzelbach

ETH Zürich

Wolfgang Kinzelbach has been Professor of Hydromechanics at ETH Zurich since 1996.

A global authority on fresh water resources, Professor Kinzelbach comes to this urgent topic from a fundamental engineering background in fluid flow, transport mechanisms, turbulence, mixing, and computational simulation.

Professor Kinzelbach studied physics at the Universities of Mainz and Munich. After a period of study at Stanford University in 1972, he transferred to the field of environmental engineering where he earned his doctorate from the University of Karlsruhe. His professional activities have taken him to Maiduguri, Nigeria, the Nuclear Research Center in Karlsruhe, and the Environmental Research Institute of the Academia Sinica in Beijing. In 1988 he was appointed full professor of Technical Hydraulics and Hydrology at the University of Kassel and in 1993 full professor of Environmental Physics at the University of Heidelberg.

His research focuses on flow and transport processes in the environment with practical applications in water resources management, pollution control, remediation and nuclear waste isolation. His current main interest is sustainable water resources management in arid and semi-arid regions, mainly in Africa and China. Among other prizes he was awarded the European Research Prize of the Koerber Foundation, the Software prize of the German Federal Minister of Research, the Henry Darcy medal of the European Geophysical Society and the Saudi-Arabian Prince Sultan International Prize for Water. He is a fellow of the American Geophysical Union. He serves among other things as president of the North-South Centre of ETH, as member of the Leuenberger Commission on the NEAT tunnels and delegate of the president of ETH for professorial search commissions.

Professor Kinzelbach was born in 1949 in Germany. He is married and has four children.

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