Marek G. Zreda, Associate Professor of Hydrology and Water Resources, and his former doctoral student, Darin Desilets (HWR PHD ’05 and Harry S. Truman Postdoctoral Fellow, Sandia National Laboratory) have been named co-recipients of the 4th International Water Prize (Creativity Prize)  for their groundbreaking work with the Cosmic Ray Probe, a technology which uses cosmic-ray neutrons to measure soil moisture content and snow pack thickness over an area of tens of hectares—passively, non-invasively, and economically.

 

These measurements provide hydrologists and atmospheric scientists with an entirely new perspective on water near the interface between the ground and the atmosphere, as well as giving water managers, engineers, and agriculturalists an invaluable and economical new tool to monitor a critical part of the hydrologic cycle.

 

Zreda and Desilets will share the 2008-2010 Creativity Prize, valued at $266,000 (US dollars), with another team of researchers, Ignacio Rodriguez-Iturbe (Princeton) and Andrea Rinaldo (Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausan, Switzerland).

 

The awards ceremony will take place on December 6, 2010, at the opening session of the 4th International Conference on Water Resources and Arid Environments in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.