Professor Diogo Bolster has been appointed as an Associate Director of the Notre Dame Environmental Change Initiative (ND-ECI), and will direct ND-ECI’s Linked Experimental Ecosystem Facility (ND-LEEF).

In this new role, Bolster will lead academic scholarship around ND-LEEF by growing faculty engagement with the facility, identifying funding opportunities to enhance the University’s environmental research capacity, supporting scholarly output and products, as well as other responsibilities to promote the shared goals of ND-ECI and ND-LEEF.

“ND-LEEF and the work I have done there in collaboration with my colleagues from Biology has transformed my research perspective,” Bolster said. “I believe that ND-LEEF has enormous potential, including its ability to act as a playground where engineers and scientists from different disciplines can learn together.”

Bolster is an Associate Professor and Frank M. Freimann Collegiate Chair in Hydrology in the Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering & Earth Sciences at the University of Notre Dame. His research focuses on the impacts humans have on the earth and its resources, specifically targeting environmental fluid flows and contaminant transport across a wide range of scales from groundwater flows in porous media to more confined flows in enclosed spaces such as buildings.

Bolster has developed mathematical and numerical models with the goal of providing useful tools to practitioners and policy makers for effective decision-making. To date, he has published more than 90 articles in peer-reviewed scientific journals and currently serves as an Associate Editor for the journal Hydrologic Processes.

Bolster directs an active research program at Notre Dame. In 2014, Bolster was awarded a National Science Foundation Early Career Development Award. He is also a member of the American Geophysical Union, International Society for Porous Media, and American Physical Society. Bolster previously served as a board director for the Consortium of Universities for the Advancement of Hydrologic Science.

“We are excited to welcome Diogo to the ND-ECI leadership team through his new role at ND-LEEF” said Jennifer Tank, ND-ECI Director. “I am confident that Diogo’s novel research breadth, along with his creativity and enthusiasm, will grow ND-LEEF in new and exciting directions. We can’t wait to get started.”