Hydrologist Andrea Rinaldo has been awarded the Stockholm Water Prize 2023 for his ground-breaking research on river networks, demonstrating their significance in the spread of solutes, aquatic species and diseases.

Professor Andrea Rinaldo is a leading authority in hydrologic sciences. His pioneering research has led to new insights into the complex ways in which water shapes the Earth’s surface and ecosystems, and has provided in-depth knowledge of how solutes and populations move at varying speed, both on and beneath the Earth’s surface.

Rinaldo’s quantitative analyses provide a fundamental understanding of rivers as ecological corridors. With the development and maintenance of such corridors being largely responsible for the spread of aquatic species and their populations, this research is key for helping policies and practices improve the preservation of species. His models for water’s role in disease transmission have been applied to real-world hotspots of diseases, such as cholera and schistosomiasis in Haiti, South Sudan, and Burkina Faso, linking fundamental research to real-life application.

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