AOGS Honorary Member
Van Thanh Van NGUYEN
McGill University
Professor Nguyen is currently Brace Chair Professor Emeritus of Civil Engineering at McGill University, Canada. At McGill, he has served in several leadership positions including Head of Civil Engineering Department; Director of the Brace Centre for Water Resources Management; and Associate Director of the Global Environmental and Climate Change Centre. He has demonstrated his remarkable vision and leadership in leading academic units and multi-institutional and multi-disciplinary research groups across Canada over more than 40 years.
Professor Nguyen is widely recognized for his novel research in Hydrology and Water Management that has significantly impacted engineering practices worldwide with over 300 peer-reviewed publications. More specifically, his pioneering research covers a remarkable range of topics including climate change impact and adaptation, modelling of extreme geophysical processes, and watershed modelling for sustainable water resource development. These pioneering works have made significant contributions to social and environmental well-being, especially in three key areas: (i) improving current engineering practices by developing innovative procedures for more cost-effective design of hydraulic infrastructures; (ii) improving our knowledge in climate variability and environmental prediction for developing suitable strategies for sustainable water management in a changing climate; and (iii) providing improved policy relevant knowledge and tools to assist public and government decision making to mitigate the climate-induced impacts. These major contributions have been included in some of the most influential technical guidelines in engineering practice in Canada and worldwide (e.g., technical guides by the Canadian Standards Association; World Meteorological Organization, and International Association for Hydro-Environment Engineering and Research, IAHR).
As a visionary international leader with a broad scientific expertise, he has been invited to deliver prestigious plenary lectures at more than 60 national and international scientific conferences around the world. This extraordinary high level of participation in international forums reveals Professor Nguyen as one of the great contributors in hydrologic science and engineering fields. He is quite willing to travel anywhere on the globe to promote the discipline of hydrology, and he displays a passion and enthusiasm for his work. Furthermore, he has been invited to serve in numerous national and international expert committees (WMO, UNESCO, etc.) as well as in several editorial boards of renowned scientific journals (Journal of Hydrologic Engineering, Journal of Hydroinformatics, etc.). He has also been invited professors at universities in Australia, Canada, China, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam. His expert advice and visionary views have made great contributions to the development of several research and training programs in Canada and worldwide.
As a well-respected academic widely known for his international professionalism, Professor Nguyen has actively contributed at leadership levels in several professional associations in the development of international co-operation activities with colleagues in North America, Europe, and Asia-Pacific regions (President of AOGS Hydrological Science Section; Leading member in several technical committees of Canadian Society for Civil Engineering, American Society of Civil Engineers, and IAHR). Finally, as a professional engineer, he has served as technical expert in several consulting engineering projects in Canada and in other countries (Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Singapore, and Vietnam).