By Mikael Mulugeta

Gabriele Villarini, associate director of IIHR—Hydroscience & Engineering, has won the 2017 Water Young Investigator Award.

The award recognizes Villarini, a UI associate professor of civil and environmental engineering, for the excellence of his research in water science. Villarini’s work has played an integral role in changing the way the scientific community uses and validates remote-sensing products, examining aspects of time series of floods and extreme rainfall, and for introducing useful concepts and applications of scaling properties of hydrological fields.

“This is the first year this award has existed, and I am very excited to be the first one selected to receive it,” says Villarini. “I want to thank the selection committee and my nominator, Professor Witold Krajewski.”

The Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute (MDPI), an academic open-access publisher headquartered in Basel, Switzerland, presents the Water Young Investigator Award to a researcher in recognition of her/his significant contribution to the advancement of the fields of water science, technology, management and governance. To be considered for the award, researchers must be under the age of 40 or 10 years or fewer removed from receiving their PhD.