Marcelo H. Garcia

Dr. García is also the Founding Director of the Centro Internacional de Grandes Rios (CIEGRi) at UNL, Santa Fe, Argentina. He served as editor of the International Journal of Hydraulic Research (IAHR) from 2001 to 2006. He was also Editor-in-Chief of the ASCE Manual of Engineering Practice 110 "Sedimentation Engineering," published by the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) in 2008. In 2005, he was elected Corresponding Member of the National Academy of Engineering of Argentina. His honors and awards include: the Alvin G. Anderson Award from the University of Minnesota (1989), the University Scholar Award from the University of Illinois (2000), Honorary Member of Chi Epsilon Civil Engineering Society (2004), the Karl Emil Hilgard Hydraulic Prize (1996, 1999), the Walter Huber Civil Engineering Research Prize (1998), the Hans Albert Einstein Award (2006), the Wesley Horner Award (2012) and the Hunter Rouse Hydraulic Engineering Award, all from ASCE. He was also recognized with the Arthur Thomas Ippen Award from the International Association of Hydro-Environmental Engineering and Research (IAHR) in Beijing, China, (2001) and with the IAGLR Chandler-Misener Award for most notable paper published in Journal of Great Lakes Research in 2011.The Panama Canal Authority recognized Dr. Garcia with National Award for Scientific Contributions to Science and Technology from SENCYT, Government of Panama (2012). The International L.G. Straub Award for Best Ph.D. Thesis in Hydraulics and Water Resources Engineering has been presented to four of his advisees: Dr. Yarko Nino (1995), Dr. Jeffrey Parsons (1998), Dr. Mariano Cantero (2007) and Dr. Jorge Abad (2008). Dr. García has supervised and supported the completion of 25 Ph.D. dissertations and 40 M.S. students. He has delivered the Distinguished Inaugural Lecture at Instituto Mexicano de Tecnologia del Agua, Cuernavaca, Mexico (2006), the Borland Distinguished Lecture in Hydraulics at Colorado State University (2008) and the Enrico Marchi Distinguished Lecture, Italian Association of Hydraulics, Florence, Italy (2012). He has been an invited professor at the University of Genoa, Italy (1993), the California Institute of Technology (1997), the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland (1999) and the Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha, Spain (2000). He is a Distinguished Member of ASCE (2013).

Related to water problems in the State of Illinois, Dr. García has developed physical models of the Boneyard Creek, Urbana, to help in the solution of flooding problems. He re-designed low-head dams on the Chicago, Fox and Vermillion Rivers to reduce the number of drowning accidents, and designed canoe chutes for the same dams in order to increase the safe recreational use of Illinois Streams. He has also worked with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to mitigate navigation problems caused by sedimentation and vegetation in the Upper Mississippi River Basin as well as with the Chicago River Control Structures, controlling the diversion of water from Lake Michigan in Chicago. He also served in the expert review board for the Fargo-Moorhead flood protection scheme. Since 2003, he has led a major effort to develop hydrologic and hydraulic models of the Tunnel and Reservoir Plan (TARP) being built the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago (MWRDGC). Together with his students he developed the first 3D hydrodynamic and water quality model of the Chicago River and associated waterways and unveiled the presence of density currents in the Chicago River during the winter months. Dr. García has also served as Co-Leader for the Sedimentation Studies Task Working Group for the St. Clair River, 2007-2010, International Great Lakes Commission (Canada-USA).

Dr. García has worked as a consultant in numerous national and international projects, most recently in the development of flood protection schemes in Guayaquil, Ecuador; in the design of Side Elevated Aeration (SEPA) Stations to improve oxygen levels in the Rio Matanza-Riachuelo, Buenos Aires, Argentina; in sedimentation issues in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, California; in reservoir sedimentation in Puerto Rico and Costa Rica; in oil spill and sediment transport modeling in the Kalamazoo River, Michigan; in flood protection and restoration in the Bogota River and La Mojana, Colombia; and in hydropower development in Argentina and Brazil.

Dr. García is a leader in the field of river mechanics, sediment transport, sedimentation engineering and environmental hydraulics. He is best known for his research in sediment entrainment from riverbeds, flow and transport in vegetated channels, the mechanics of oceanic turbidity currents, and the dynamics of mudflows in mountain areas. His research has been funded at the Federal level by the National Science Foundation, the Office of Naval Research, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. At the state level, Dr. García has received support from the Illinois Department of Natural Resources (IDNR), the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago (MWRDGC), the Illinois Water Resources Center, the Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant Program and the Sanitary District of Decatur, Illinois.