Georgia Destouni Professor of Hydrology

As professor of Engineering Hydrology at KTH Royal Institute of Technology during 1999-2005, I developed and taught courses in this and related subjects within the Civil Engineering programme and the international Master's Programme in Environmental Engineering and Sustainable Infrastructure at KTH. As a new professor at Stockholm University in 2005, in a new subject area Hydrology, Hydrogeology and Water Resources for this university, I have with colleagues in our expanding research and educational group built up and taught in a related Master's Programme at the Department of Physical Geography. The subject name signified our aim and efforts to link different water-science fields and components in this programme, in close connection with our research that also targets these linkages. The programme thus included and coupled hydrology with primary focus on surface waters (streams, rivers, lakes), hydrogeology with focus on groundwater, the soil water-groundwater-surface water interactions, and the water resource and management aspects addressed in the water resources field. This Master's Programme in Hydrology, Hydrogeology and Water Resources developed into one of the most popular and largest advanced-level programmes given at the Department of Physical Geography at Stockholm University. After more than a decade of giving this programme in the same form, it was paused for some time for updating and further development.

My further educational development efforts have focused on strategic projects with university and EU support. These have, for example, included a project for developing Online-based sustainability-focused education on environmental system dynamics, and a European project for Training new generations on geomorphology, geohazards and geoheritage through Virtual Reality Technologies.

In PhD level education and supervision of early career scientists, I have so far been main adviser of 24 PhD-students and 18 post-doctoral fellows. Of these, 22 PhD students (16 at SU, 6 at KTH) and 16 postdocs have by now completed their dissertations, degrees and projects with me. I also am or have been co-adviser of several more PhD students and postdocs. Many of the early career scientists I have advised and mentored have gained top positions as full, associate or tenure-track professors at universities, or as research leaders, senior or junior researchers or analysts at research institutes and other knowledge-based organizations and private companies in Sweden and other parts of the world.

Through my research I want to understand how Earth’s water system works and what drives it variations and change trends around the world and at different scales, up to global.

My research regards the processes, variability and changes that determine and characterize the fluxes, storages, availability and quality of water, and how they interact with society, climate, and ecosystems across various Earth System interfaces. It also regards how improved scientific understanding can guide society’s management of critical water resources and water-related risks, e.g., due to extremes like droughts and floods, water pollution, and disease spreading. I use theoretical, data-driven, and model-based approaches to study, decipher and quantify these water aspects and interconnections.