Professor Jorg Imberger - founder and Director of the Centre for Water Research at UWA - is the only Australian among nine international engineers elected as Foreign Associates of the US National Academy of Engineering.
Professor Jorg Imberger - founder and Director of the Centre for Water Research at UWA - is the only Australian among nine international engineers elected as Foreign Associates of the US National Academy of Engineering.
Professor Jorg Imberger - founder and Director of the Centre for Water Research at UWA - is the only Australian among nine international engineers elected as Foreign Associates of the US National Academy of Engineering.
Professor Imberger was previously awarded the Onassis Prize and the Stockholm Water Prize. He is a Fellow of the International Water Academy in Stockholm, and is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Engineering, the Australian Academy of Sciences and the Australian Academy of Technological Science and Engineering. The Professor of Environmental Engineering will travel to Washington DC in October for the formal inauguration of new US and foreign associate members into the Academy.
Professor Imberger said that he was honoured to be have been elected to the prestigious US body, only three other Australian's have been elected to the Academy since its founding in 1964.
"It is probably the highest achievement one can have in this area and I am overwhelmed because I had no idea that this was happening. To get this sort of recognition for intellectual achievement across the engineering discipline is quite amazing for someone not working in the United States. It is fantastic," he said.
The UWA researcher said that he and his students and colleagues at the Centre for Water Research were working on international projects in many different countries.
Recently the Centre was awarded a $750,000 project by Singapore's national water agency. The project will use technology developed by the Centre to monitor water quality. The technology uses a sophisticated combination of monitoring equipment, database management, computer simulations, web technology and weather forecasting to provide a real-time decision support system for drinking water reservoirs. Similar technology developed by the centre has been used to manage Sydney's water and to monitor water in a World Bank project in East Africa's Lake Victoria.
"The visibility of the Centre for Water Research around the world is extremely high," he said.
A champion of the environment and sustainability, Professor Imberger said that international water issues were attracting increasing attention and this heightened the need for graduates with environmental engineering skills. The Centre for Water Research attracts postgraduate students from across the world.