Marquette engineering professor honored with young scholar award
MILWAUKEE — Dr. Anthony Parolari, assistant professor of civil, construction and environmental engineering in the Opus College of Engineering at Marquette University, is a recipient of a 2020 Way Klingler Young Scholar Award.
The award supports promising young scholars in critical stages of their careers. The award is intended to fund $2,000 in operating costs and to cover a portion of salary to afford the recipient a one-semester release from teaching.
Parolari is the driving force in creating a research program that merges basic ecohydrological science with applications in engineering hydrology.
His research centers around developing quantitative models to forecast ecosystem dynamics under climate variability and land use intensification. Parolari has two primary research goals: quantifying spatial and temporal patterns of vegetation-soil-climate interactions and applying models of vegetation-soil-climate interactions to engineering problems of drought, flood, and water quality mitigation in urban and agricultural systems.
“Dr. Parolari is highly collaborative, collegial and service-minded,” said Dr. Kristina Ropella, Opus Dean of the Opus College of Engineering. “He is passionate about Marquette’s responsibility in student and faculty development as well as Marquette’s leadership in solving global challenges.”
Parolari’s work in applied ecohydrology is strongly reflected by his local and international service activity. As part of his role in the American Geophysical Union’s Ecohydrology Technical Committee, he organized the first ever Urban Ecohydrology session at the AGU Fall Meeting and now leads a subcommittee that will propose a separate Urban Systems Conference.
During his research semester, Parolari plans to establish a research framework for the quantitative, ecohydrological analysis of urban water systems; work on a proposal for an AGU Chapman Conference on Sustainable Urban Systems and write a literature review on urban ecohydrology research needs. He also plans to develop and apply a suite of data analytics/modeling tools to evaluate the predictability and controllability of urban stream water quality.
Parolari has served on a number of local advisory committees for green infrastructure design projects. His work has been featured in 25 publications and has been awarded a number of highly sought-after grants.
