Diogo Bolster, professor and Henry Massman Department Chair of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Earth Sciences at the University of Notre Dame, has been awarded an endowed professorship.
He was named Notre Dame’s Frank M. Freimann Professor of Hydrology on July 1, 2022.
“Appointment to an endowed chair is one of the highest honors in the University, signifying distinguished achievement in one’s field,” said Patricia J. Culligan, the Matthew H. McCloskey Dean of the College of Engineering.
“Professor Bolster is internationally recognized as a leader in the area of subsurface flow and modeling,” Culligan said. “He also is an exceptional teacher, having received the College of Engineering Outstanding Teacher of the Year Award in 2018, and the Edmund P. Joyce, C.S.C., Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching in 2017. I am thrilled to see his accomplishments recognized by this chair.”
Bolster is an expert in environmental fluid dynamics and hydrology. His research focuses on the impact humans have on the earth and its resources, specifically environmental fluid flows and contaminant transport across a wide range of scales — from groundwater flows in porous media to confined flows in buildings and other enclosed spaces.
He is the Associate Director of the Environmental Change Initiative, overseeing ND-ECI’s Linked Experimental Ecosystem Facility (ND-LEEF).
Bolster has over 175 peer-reviewed publications, and he serves as an associate editor for the journal Hydrologic Processes. He was board director for the Consortium of Universities for the Advancement of Hydrologic Science. In 2014, he was awarded a National Science Foundation CAREER Award.
After completing his undergraduate degree in mechanical engineering at University College Dublin, Bolster worked as a computational fluid dynamics engineer and project manager. He received a master’s and Ph.D. in mechanical engineering with a focus on environmental fluid dynamics from the University of California, San Diego.
Bolster completed postdoctoral work at the Technical University of Catalunya in Barcelona. He joined the Notre Dame faculty in 2010. He was named chair of the department of civil and environmental engineering and earth sciences in 2020.
— Karla Cruise, College of Engineering