New Professor for Hydraulic Engineering and Modelling
At the same time, Prof. Habersack also took over the lead of the Institute for Water Management, Hydrology and Hydraulic Engineering at the Department for Water, Atmosphere and Environment.
Professorship for Hydraulic Engineering and Modelling
The teaching and research focus lies in the identification, measuring and modelling of hydraulically relevant processes in order to design and implement technical measures that serve the economic and social demands of the society and which are able to preserve and/or improve the ecological status of rivers. In the energy field the refurbishment and optimization of existing hydropower plants is dominant. In river engineering new knowledge is necessary to develop measures, which compensate the negative impacts of anthropogenic influences, improve the flood protection of settlements and essentially deal with the flow and sediment regime affecting the river and floodplain. The institute runs a hydraulics laboratory, which allows experimental studies to derive data and process understanding, being of high importance also for teaching of Master and PhD students and which will be coordinated by Helmut Habersack.
Helmut Habersack
1998-1999 Helmut Habersack spent as Post-Doc at the National Institute for Water and Atmospheric Research, New Zealand. 2001 he finished the habilitation and became Ao.Univ.Prof. 2003 Helmut Habersack performed a research stay in Canada. 2009 he was visiting professor at the UC Berkeley / USA and University of Minnesota, St. Anthony Falls Laboratory / USA. Since 2010 Helmut Habersack is Head of the Christian Doppler Laboratory for Advanced Methods in River Monitoring, Modelling and River Engineering (http://cdlabor-imfluss.boku.ac.at/index.php/en.html). Helmut Habersack has 20 years of experience in river engineering, integrated flood risk management, sediment transport, river restoration and hydropower, interacting with flood protection, sediment transport and ecology. He is the (co)author of 63 journal publications (31 SCI papers), 13 monographs, over 80 proceedings and gave 150 national and international lectures. Helmut Habersack organized the International Conference „On the Status and Future of the World´s Large Rivers“, which was held in April 2011 in Vienna. 2005 he organized the „6th International Conference on Gravel-Bed Rivers”. Additionally to the membership in international scientific societies, being a reviewer for SCI journals Helmut Habersack is Associate Editor of the Journal of Sediment Research. Beside various lectures he has been supervising 113 master thesis and 17 PhDs (including current ones). In the field of public relations numerous interviews occurred in media (e.g. guest in 5 ZIB2-News).