- January 24, 2020
- Posted by: Nicky Majd
- Category: Society News
A new award is created in honor of the eminent soil and groundwater scientist Marthinus (Rien) Th. van Genuchten. It has been made possible by a generous donation from Dr. Betty-May Pontedeiro to the InterPore Foundation.
The award will be given to an early-career researcher with the main research focus of “porous media for a green world”. This may involve significant theoretical, experimental and/or modeling advances addressing major soil, hydrologic and/or environmental problems facing our planet. The award is given annually to a person with at most three years of experience after receiving his/her PhD (not including the year of the award) and comes with an InterPore conference grant of €1,500. The grant is preferentially intended for young researchers from countries with low- or middle-income economies as defined by the World Bank.
Rien van Genuchten Rien is world renown for his enormous achievements in the area of fluids flow and solutes transport in partially-saturated porous media. He has made highly impactful contributions to the understanding and modeling of subsurface processes, in such widely varying fields as soil physics, hydrology, geology, the environmental sciences, and civil engineering. Among many services to the community have been the establishment of the Vadose Zone Journal, developing many robust modelling packages (such as HYDRUS), and serving on innumerable committees. He has received a large number of awards and other recognitions from major soil and hydrology societies. He was awarded InterPore Lifetime Membership Award in 2012.
We asked Dr. Betty-May Pontedeiro about her motivation to make this donation and create this award.
Which was the motivation to create the Rien van Genuchten Early-Career Award? Rien has been always ready to help students and young scientists to carry out the best possible research, publish their papers in the open literature, and build a good career. Also, he has always contributed to technology transfer, selflessly helping others, specially younger people, with their research and education, and disseminating the practical and engineering aspects of his work. This award would be a modest step towards continuing his legacy.
Why “research for a green world”? Rien is very much concerned about how we can address environmental issues, sustainable agriculture, and clean water production to create a better and more sustainable world for the future generations.
Why InterPore? If Rien were to begin his career today, for sure he would like to carry out pore-scale numerical and experimental research to better understand the basic processes governing larger-scale processes. But then in such a way that results can be eventually used to address some of the urgent environmental problems facing our world. InterPore’s mission is very much along these lines. So, I cannot think of a professional society more dedicated to this view.
Finally, I would like to thank the InterPore Society for making it possible to implement the Rien van Genuchten Early-Career Award. My special thanks to one of Rien’s best friends and colleagues, Majid Hassanizadeh, for helping and guiding me through this process.
Call for Rien van Genuchten Early-Career Award of Porous Media for a Green World Nominations
Nominations for this award are being accepted now. The awardee should be able to participate in Qingdao conference.
Deadline for submission of complete nomination package is Saturday, 29 February 2020.