Ian Turner
Professor and Deputy Head of School, Civil & Environmental Engineering
UNSW Water Research Laboratory
Ian is a Professor and is also Deputy Head of School, Civil & Environmental Engineering. From 2014 to 2020 Ian was the Managing Director of WRL. He is a Senior Coastal Specialist in WRL’s Coast and Estuary investigations group. Ian’s current research interests include beach groundwater dynamics and sediment transport at the beach face, monitoring of coastal change and impacts of climate variability, coastal erosion control and coastal management, and coastal aquifer hydrogeology.
In 1999 Ian installed the first Australian-funded Argus coastal imaging station, and continues to play an active role in ongoing WRL Coastal Imaging projects. Ian is a Fellow of the Institution of Engineers Australia, and from 2005 – 2015 was a member of the EA ‘National Committee on Coastal and Ocean Engineering’.
During 2020 Ian was named by The Australian as Australian Leader in the field of Ocean & Marine Engineering, with his extensive contribution to coastal engineering being recognised as one of “Australia’s leading researchers in engineering and computer science… with the highest number of citations from papers published in the last five years in the 20 top journals in their field."
Research Interests:
- Monitoring of shoreline variability and change
- Beach groundwater dynamics and sediment transport at the beach face
- Forecasting of coastal change and impacts of climate variability
- Coastal management
