García honored as ASCE Distinguished Member

Professor Marcelo García has been elected a Distinguished Member of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE). Distinguished Members have "attained acknowledged eminence in some branch of engineering or in the arts and sciences related thereto," according to ASCE. García will be officially inducted in October.

García is the Chester and Helen Siess Endowed Professor of Civil Engineering and the Director of the Ven Te Chow Hydrosystems Laboratory. He joined the faculty of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in January 1990. He teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in the Environmental Hydrology and Hydraulic Engineering area.

García is a leader in the field of river mechanics, sediment transport, sedimentation engineering and environmental hydraulics. He is best known for his research in sediment entrainment from riverbeds, flow and transport in vegetated channels, the mechanics of oceanic turbidity currents, and the dynamics of mudflows in mountain areas. Related to water problems in the State of Illinois, García has developed physical models of the Boneyard Creek on the U of I campus to help solve flooding problems. He has redesigned low-head dams on the Chicago, Fox and Vermillion rivers to reduce the number of drowning accidents, and he has designed canoe chutes for the same dams in order to increase the safe recreational use of Illinois streams.

Since 2003, García has led a major effort to develop hydrologic and hydraulic models of the Tunnel and Reservoir Plan being built by the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago. Together with his students he developed the first 3D hydrodynamic and water quality model of the Chicago River and associated waterways and unveiled the presence of density currents in the Chicago River during the winter months.