September 15, 2025
DISTINGUISHED LECTURE
Ana P. Barros, Ph.D.
Donald Biggar Willett Distinguished Chair of Engineering Professor and Department Head
Civil and Environmental Engineering
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Resilience at the Intersection of Science and Engineering – Twenty years of research and discovery to advance water prediction in the Southern Appalachians.
Nearly one billion people live in Earth’s mountainous regions, and more than 50% of the world’s biodiversity hotspots are in areas of complex terrain. From headwaters to foreland basins, mountains function as Water Towers (WTs) to their adjacent landscapes (valleys and plains, steppes, savannahs, and prairies) that encompass the breadbasket regions of the world. Changes in land-use and land-cover result in changes in precipitation and land-atmosphere interactions across temporal and spatial scales, impacting the phenomenology of extreme events, landscape resilience, and water availability for both ecosystems and people. Territorial planning, water prediction, long-lead flash flood guidance and the use of Al methods are studied to improve disaster preparedness.
Friday, September 26, 2025 @ 11:15 AM Watt Center Auditorium
