Prof. Wolfgang Kinzelbach

Institute of Environmental Engineering
ETH Zurich, Switzerland

Wolfgang Kinzelbach has been full Professor of Hydromechanics at the ETH Zurich since January 1, 1996.

Prof. Kinzelbach was born in 1949 in Germersheim, Germany, is married and has three children. He 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. He was the recipient of a scholarship from the German Fellowship Foundation (Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes). 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 Peking. He completed his habilitation requirement at the University of Stuttgart in 1987. 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 concentrates on flow and transport processes in the environment with practical application in water resources management, pollution control, remediation and nuclear waste isolation. His current focus is on sustainable water management especially in arid and semi-arid regions. He was awarded the Ehrensenator Huber Prize by the University of Karlsruhe, the European "Förderpreis" of the Körber Foundation, the Softwareprize of the Federal Minister of Research and the Henry Darcy medal of the European Geophysical Society. He is a member of the Research Commission of ETH and the Leuenberger Commission on NEAT tunnels and a scientific counsellor to BRGM, GSF and PSI.