Foufoula-Georgiou named director of National Center for Earth-surface Dynamics

Efi Foufoula-Georgiou, a McKnight Distinguished Professor in the University’s Department of Civil Engineering, has been appointed the new director of the National Center for Earth-surface Dynamics (NCED), a National Science Foundation (NSF) Science and Technology Center based at the University of Minnesota. The appointment is effective Aug. 1, 2008. Foufoula-Georgiou replaces NCED director Christopher Paola who will remain a professor in geology and geophysics and will continue as a researcher at NCED.

Foufoula-Georgiou has been a faculty member at the University of Minnesota since 1989. She has served as co-director of NCED since 2002 and is a former director of the University’s St. Anthony Falls Laboratory. She also was recently named as the University’s inaugural Ling Chair in Environmental Engineering.

Foufoula-Georgiou’s cutting-edge research is at the interfaces of hydrology, eco-geomorphology, mathematics, and environmental engineering. Her ground-breaking work on complex environmental systems has attracted attention from researchers in the U.S. and around the world. Her areas of research include hydrology and geomorphology, with special interest on scaling theories, multiscale dynamics and space-time modeling of precipitation and landforms.

She is the recipient of numerous awards including the John Dalton Medal of the European Geophysical Society and the 2007 Hydrologic Sciences Award from the American Geophysical Union for her important and far-reaching contributions to space-time rainfall modeling and scaling analysis in hydrology. She is a fellow of the American Geophysical Union and American Meteorological Society, and a member of the European Academy of Sciences. She has been an associate editor and editor of various scientific journals and has served on many national and international advisory boards

Foufoula-Georgiou holds a degree in civil engineering from the National Technical University of Athens, Greece and a Ph.D. in environmental engineering from the University of Florida.