Fabián A. Bombardelli, Ph.D.
Professor

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Fabián A. Bombardelli obtained a degree in Hydraulic Engineering at the Universidad Nacional de La Plata, Argentina (a six-year program) and a Masters degree (Magister) in "Numerical Simulation and Control" at the Universidad de Buenos Aires. (He was the first candidate to be awarded this degree, after defending his Thesis on January of 1999.) Before arriving in the United States to complete his education, Fabián was Research Engineer on hydraulic modeling at the Instituto Nacional del Agua (INA) in Ezeiza, Argentina from 1992 until August 1998. At INA, he developed a thesis on the numerical simulation of the hydrodynamics and pollutant transport in a large estuary (1993; equivalent to a Masters degree without courses), and he was involved in the mathematical and numerical modeling of problems associated with waves in coastal areas and harbors, environmental impact of bridges over water courses, scour of river banks downstream of dams, time evolution of river beds, flow in porous media, and thermal discharges to rivers. Among those works, Fabián developed and implemented numerical models of flow and water quality of the Paraná, de la Plata, and Uruguay Rivers, which rank among the largest water courses in the world.

Fabián developed his Ph.D. research in the Ven Te Chow Hydrosystems Laboratory of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), obtaining his degree in May of 2004 (his thesis defense was in September of 2003). Fabian's doctoral work was related to turbulence aspects of aireation bubble plumes.

 

CURRICULUM VITAE

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EDUCATION

2004 Ph.D. in “Civil and Environmental Engineering,” CEE, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), USA (May 2004; defended on September 15, 2003). GPA: 4.0 (perfect score). The CEE Department of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is usually ranked as number one or two by the US News and Reports.
1999 Master (Magister) in “Numerical Simulation and Control,” University of Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, Argentina (defended January 5, 1999). GPA: 8.33/10.
1993 Thesis of Scholarship, National Institute for Water (INA), Argentina.
1992 Hydraulic Engineer (a six-year program; equivalent to a Master degree), National University of La Plata, Argentina. Several additional courses (9 more courses) were attended, pertaining to the Civil Engineering field. GPA: 9.42/10.

MAIN AWARDS AND RECOGNITIONS

Nominated for the Outstanding Faculty Teaching Award, UC Davis.
2015 Outstanding ASCE Faculty Advisor Award in the State of California (Region 9). Received on March 18, 2016, Sacramento, CA.
2015 ASCE Outstanding Civil Engineering Faculty Advisor Award, Sacramento Section. Received on October 6, 2015, Sacramento, CA. (See link.)
University of Illinois, 2015 CEE Young Alumni Award, received on March 11, 2015. Awarded by the CEE Alumni Association of the UIUC. The Young Alumnus/Alumna Achievement Award recognizes a recent graduate who has achieved distinction in his or her field and reached a level of accomplishment significantly greater than that of other recent graduates. The citation reads: For an outstanding academic career at the University of California at Davis in research, teaching and service; for his leadership in multi-phase flows for environmental applications; for his unparalleled set of research skills in theory, numerical computations, laboratory observations and field work; and for his active role assisting the United Nations and the government of Argentina on diverse projects in Latin America.. (See link.)
Nominated for the Arthur Ippen Award, IAHR, January 2015, by Profs Hubert Chanson (Australia), Marcelo García (United States) and Jorge Matos (Portugal), and Dr. Arturo Marcano (Venezuela).
Selected as Editor in Chief of the Ibero American Journal of Water, published by Elsevier, October 2014 – present. (See link.)
Selected as Member of the Reviewer Board, International Journal of Sediment Research, January 2014 – present.
Selected as Associate Editor of the Journal of Hydraulic Engineering, ASCE, February 2013 – present.
Journal of Hydraulic Eng., ASCE, Oustanding Reviewer Award, 2011.
Journal of Hydraulic Res., IAHR, “Willi Hager” Award for Best Reviewer Award for the period 2010-2011, International Association for Hydro-Environment Engineering and Research (IAHR). (Received at the 34th IAHR Congress in Brisbane, Australia, July 1, 2011.) (See link.)
Finalist in the international competition for the 2004 Lorenz Straub Award, for the most meritorious thesis of hydraulic engineering or related fields (University of Minnesota). Nominated by the CEE Department of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Although I did not win the award, the finalist theses were judged to be of award caliber (please see ).
Finalist Award in the 11th Student Technical Paper Competition, 2003 ASME Pressure Vessels and Piping Conference, Cleveland, OH, ASME International (July). Paper entitled: “Parallel computations of the dynamic behavior of bubble plumes.” (See certificate.)
First Prize (Best paper) in the Student Technical Paper Competition for the 2003 World Water & Environmental Resources Congress, Philadelphia, PA, EWRI/ASCE (June). Paper entitled: “Characterization of coherent structures from parallel, LES computations of wandering effects in bubble plumes.” (See award.) (Download pdf.)
Glenn and Helen Stout Water Resources Research Award for "academic achievement and outstanding research in hydrosystems," 2001, Ven Te Chow Hydrosystems Laboratory, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. (See award.)
Outstanding-performance award, SINAPA, National Institute for Water, Argentina, 1994.

EDITORSHIP AND PARTICIPATION IN SCIENTIFIC COMMITTEES

Member of the Scientific Committee of the following conferences:
1 7th. Int. Conf. on Lake Management and Conservation, San Martín de los Andes, Argentina, 1997. Rapporteur during the conference. (Invited.)
2 ENIEF’04, XIV Congress on Numerical Methods and their Applications, San Carlos de Bariloche, Argentina, November 2004. (Invited.)
3 River Flow 2008, Izmir, Cezme, Turkey, September. (Invited.)
4 Second International Junior Researcher and Engineer Workshop, International Association for Hydraulic Engineering and Research, IAHR, Pisa, Italy, July-August 2008. (Invited.)
5 Second International Symposium on Shallow Flows, Hong Kong, December 2008. (Invited). (See link)
6 RCEM 2009, River, Coastal and Estuarine Morphodynamics, Santa Fe, Argentina, September.
7 Third International Junior Researcher and Engineer Workshop, IAHR, Edinburgh, May 2010. (Invited.)
8 River Flow 2010, Braunschweig, Germany.
9 RCEM 2011, River, Coastal and Estuarine Morphodynamics, Beijing, China. (Invited.)
10 34th World IAHR Congress, Brisbane, Australia, 2011. Although there was no formal panel of Editors, I was invited by Prof. Hubert Chanson to edit Section 5.2 on eco-hydrology, involving the management of 28 papers, selecting 2 o 3 reviewers for each, and making a decision on the suitability for inclusion in the proceedings of the congress.
11 Fourth IAHR International Symposium on Hydraulic Structures, Porto, Portugal, February 2012. (Invited.)
12 Fourth International Junior Researcher and Engineer Workshop, IAHR, Logan, Utah, June 2012. (Invited.)
13 River Flow 2012, San José, Costa Rica, September.
14 RCEM 2013, River, Coastal and Estuarine Morphodynamics, Cantabria, Spain. (Invited.)
15 Jornadas de Ingeniería del Agua (Water Engineering Meeting), Valencia, Spain, 2013. (Invited.)
16 Latin American Congress on Hydraulics, Santiago, Chile, September 2014. (Invited.)
17 Second International Workshop on Hydraulic Structures, organized by IAHR Hydraulic Structures section, Coimbra, Portugal, May 2015. (Invited.)
18 RCEM 2015, River, Coastal and Estuarine Morphodynamics, Iquitos, Peru. (Invited.) (See link).
19 River Flow 2016, Saint Louis, July (See link).
20 Latin American Congress on Hydraulics, to be held in Lima, Peru, September 2016. (Invited.)
Invited Member of the Editorial Board of the Open Journal of Civil Engineering (2007-2016).
Co-editor of the Newsletter of the Hydraulic Structures Section of IAHR (2007-2012).
Guest Co-Editor of Special Issue of the journal Environmental Fluid Mechanics, Springer, titled: “Progress in the observation and modeling of turbulent multi-phase flows.” (2007-2009), with Prof. Hubert Chanson. The Special Issue was published in April 2009.
“Acting” Associate Editor of Environmental Fluid Mechanics, Springer. The Editor-in-Chief of the journal requested me to manage some more papers in addition to those of the Special Issue (2009-2010).
Member of the Editorial Board of Environmental Fluid Mechanics, Springer, 2011-present (See link.)
The appointment was renewed by Prof. H. J. Fernando in 2014.
Associate Editor of the Journal of Hydraulic Engineering, ASCE, since February 2013. (Invited by then Editor in Chief Prof. Terry Sturm.)
Member of the Reviewer Board of the International Journal of Sediment Research, since January 2014. (Invited.)
Guest Co-Editor of another Special Issue of the journal Environmental Fluid Mechanics, Springer, with Prof. Hubert Chanson. The Special Issue is scheduled to be published in late 2016.
Editor in Chief of the new “Revista Iberoamericana del Agua, RIBAGUA,” published by Elsevier, under the support of the IAHR. The first issue was launched in October 2014. (See link).

INVITED SESSION KEYNOTE LECTURES AND PLENARY LECTURES

Invited Keynote Speaker in ENIEF’04, XIV Congress on Numerical Methods and their Applications, San Carlos de Bariloche, Argentina, November 2004. Delivered on November 9, 2004. Paper: “Simulation of wandering phenomena in bubble plumes via a - model and a Large-Eddy-Simulation (LES) approach.”
Invited Session Lecturer in McMAT 2007, ASME Conference on Applied Mechanics and Materials, Austin, Texas, June. Invited by Dr. Victor Calo. Delivered on June 4. Presentation: “Hierarchical modeling of bubble plumes.”
Invited Keynote Speaker in ENIEF’08, XVIII Congress on Numerical Methods and their Applications, San Luis, Argentina, November 2008. Invited by Dr. Marcela Goldsmidt. Delivered on November 12, 2008. Presentation: “Eulerian and Lagrangian theoretical and numerical models for the simulation of multi-phase turbulent flows.” (In Spanish.)
Invited Lecture Speaker, 16th. Congress of Asia and Pacific Division of the IAHR, and 3rd. Int. Symposium on Hydraulic Structures, Nanjing, China, October 2008. (I could not attend the meeting due to last moment health problems.)
Invited Session Speaker, The Meeting of the Americas, Foz do Iguacu, Brazil, August, 2010. Session on Rivers (Delivered on my behalf by Prof. García, on August 11, 2010). Presentation: “Challenges to the understanding and modeling of flow and transport in the Delta of the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers, California.”
Invited Plenary Speaker, Fourth IAHR International Symposium on Hydraulic Structures, Porto, Portugal. Presentation delivered on February 10, 2012: “Computational multi-phase fluid dynamics applied to the design and optimization of hydraulic structures.”
Invited Plenary Speaker, Latin American Congress on Hydraulics, San José, Costa Rica. Presentation delivered on September 11, 2012: “The closing and stratification habits of a small estuary in California.” (In Spanish.)
Invited Plenary Speaker, Meeting on water quality, organized by AySA (Argentine Water and Sanitary Works), Buenos Aires, Argentina. Presentation delivered on November 8, 2012: “Modeling of water courses for the analysis of quality: Fundamentals, limitations and promises via examples.” (In Spanish.)
Invited Plenary Speaker, Experimental methods in hydraulics III (MEH III), Santa Fe, Argentina. Presentation delivered on March 22, 2013: “Approximation to the quantification of sediment resuspension in lakes.” (In Spanish.)
Invited Plenary Speaker, Water Engineering Meeting, Valencia, Spain. Presentation delivered on October, 2013: “Experimental and numerical results of flow over stepped spillways and other associated flows.” (In Spanish.)
Invited Plenary Speaker, Latin American Congress on Hydraulics, Santiago, Chile. Presentation delivered on August 26, 2014: “How to write a good journal paper.” (In Spanish. This presentation was associated to RIBAGUA.)
Invited Session Speaker in ENIEF’14, XXI Congress on Numerical Methods and their Applications, Bariloche, Argentina. Presentation delivered on September 23, 2014: “Turbulence closures in free-surface flows past hydraulic structures.” (In Spanish with slides in English.)
Invited Plenary Speaker, Experimental methods in hydraulics IV (MEH IV), La Plata, Argentina. Presentation delivered on March 22, 2015: “Closure and stratification habits of an estuary in California.” (In Spanish.)
Invited Session Speaker in South Korea. Presentation delivered on October 29, 2015: “Computational Multi-phase Fluid Dynamics (CMPFD) for rivers and hydraulic structures: Where we are and where we go.” This presentation took part of a special session (called Global Session) of the Korean Society of Civil Engineers (KSCE) 2015 Convention on “River restoration program for coexistence between nature and human.”

OTHER RECOGNITIONS

Honor Society Phi Kappa Phi (2000).
Voted Member of the Hydrologic Sciences Graduate Group, University of California, Davis, June 2004.
Listed in Marquis Who’s Who in America, 2004/2005; also in subsequent editions.
Listed in Marquis Who’s Who in Science and Engineering, 2005-2006 issue, page 185; listed also in subsequent editions.
Listed in Marquis Who’s Who in the World, 2005, 2008.
Invited contribution (paper and presentation) to the Mini-symposium on “Fluvial Hydraulics and River Morphodynamics,” 7th International Conference on Hydro-Science and Engineering, Philadelphia, September 2006. Invited contribution (paper and presentation) to the “Workshop on Environmental and Extreme Multiphase Flows,” Gainsville, Florida, April 2012. Presentation entitled: “Eulerian-Eulerian and Eulerian-Lagrangian models for sediment transport in open channels.” Invited contribution (presentation) to the Mini-symposium on “Turbulent modeling and simulation,” on “Advances in Computational Mechanics,” a conference to honor the 70th birthday of Prof. Thomas Hughes, San Diego, February 26, 2013. Presentation entitled: “Methods for the simulation of environmental turbulent flows.” Invited contribution (presentation) to the Mini-symposium on “Computational modeling of turbulent and complex flows with applications III,” on the 11th. World Congress on Computational Mechanics (WCCM XI), Barcelona, July 23, 2014. Presentation entitled: “Comparison of performance of turbulence closures in free-surface flows past hydraulic structures.”
Invited and voted Member (participant) of the Hydraulic Structures Section, IAHR (2007-date) and Member of the Leadership Team (2009-2011).
Invited/volunteer Session/s Chairperson-Moderator in diverse conferences worldwide: 1) ASCE/EWRI World Environmental and Water Resources Congress, West Palm Beach, Florida, May 2016 (on May 24); 2) ASCE/EWRI World Environmental and Water Resources Congress, Portland, Oregon, June 2014 (on June 4); 3) Third International Symposium on Shallow Flows, Iowa, June 2012 (on June 4; invited); 4) XXV Latin American Congress on Hydraulics, San Jose, Costa Rica, September 2012 (invited); 5) River Flow 2012, San Jose, Costa Rica, September 2012 (invited); 6) 6th Biennial Bay-Delta Conference, Sacramento, California, September 2010; 7) River Flow 2008, Cezme, Izmir, Turkey, September (invited); 8) Fifth Symposium on Environmental Hydraulics, Tempe, Arizona, December 2007 (invited); 9) 7th International Conference on Hydro-Science and Engineering, Philadelphia, September 2006 (invited); 10) XXXI IAHR Congress, Seoul, South Korea, September 2005 (invited); 11) ENIEF’04, XIV Congress on Numerical Methods and their Applications, San Carlos de Bariloche, Argentina, November 2004 (invited).
Invited/volunteer Session Organizer in different conferences: 1) American Geophysical Union (AGU) Fall meeting, December 2016, session on “Advances in mechanistic approaches for the analysis and simulation of sediment suspended-load and bed-load in streams,” San Francisco; 2) American Geophysical Union (AGU) Fall meeting, December 2014, session on “Verification, validation, uncertainty quantification and scaling challenges in geophysical and surface processes models II,” San Francisco; 3) 2013 Floodplain Management Conference, Member of the “2-D Modeling Symposium,” Anaheim, CA (invited); 4) ASCE-EWRI 2011 Water Environmental & Water Resources Congress, Palm Spring, California, session on “Verification and validation of 3D free-surface models;” 5) 6th Biennial Bay-Delta Conference, Sacramento, California, September 2010; 6) ENIEF’06, XV Congress on Numerical Methods and their Applications, Santa Fe, Argentina, November 2006; 7) MECOM’05. VIII Congress on Computational Mechanics, Buenos Aires, Argentina, November 2005; 8) ENIEF’04, XIV Congress on Numerical Methods and their Applications, San Carlos de Bariloche, Argentina, November 2004 (invited).
Voted Member the Executive Committee of the Hydrologic Sciences Graduate Group, University of California, Davis (2011-2013).
Member, and Vice Chair of the task committee on “Verification and validation of 3D free surface models,” within the ASCE/EWRI Committee on Computational Hydraulics (2010-2012). Chair of the task committee for the period 2012-2016. Member of the ASCE/EWRI Committee on Computational Hydraulics.

MEMBERSHIP

International Association for Hydraulic Engineering and Research (IAHR) student chapter, 2001-2003; Individual Member since 2007 (#9863).
Association of Engineers of Buenos Aires Province, Argentina, 1991-2003.
Argentine Association for Computational Mechanics (AMCA), since 1995.
Phi Kappa Phi, USA (2000-2004).
The Planetary Society, USA (2000-2003).
International Water Resources Association (IWRA), student chapter, 2001-2003.
American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), student chapter, 2003. Associate Member since 2006.
American Physical Society (APS), 2005-date.

MULTI-MEDIA RELEASES

The research performed at the University of Illinois about canoe chutes was discussed in the News Gazette, Champaign, on June 4, 2001.  My Ph.D. work about bubble plumes was featured in the Spring 2004 issue of "Access," the magazine of the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, NCSA. In addition, the article "Toil and bubble" was featured in a CD containing special research developed at facilities of NCSA.  The work associated with density currents in the Chicago River was featured on the webpage of the College of Engineering of the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign during summer 2005.  It was also featured on the Illinois CEE Alumni Association Newsletter (Spring/Summer 2005).

Prof. Bombardelli was interviewed by revista Ingeniar, from the National University of La Plata, 2014. (See the issue.)

Prof. Bombardelli was also interviewed by the Imperial Valley Press, 2015. (See the issue.)

Last update: 08/24/16


Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering - University of California, Davis
2001 Ghausi Hall, One Shields Ave., Davis, CA 95616