Rate My Professor Badin Gibbes

Associate Professor Badin Gibbes serves in the School of Civil Engineering within the Faculty of Engineering, Architecture and Information Technology at the University of Queensland. An environmental engineer with over 20 years of experience in environmental hydrology and water resource engineering, he earned a Bachelor (Honours) of Engineering from Griffith University, a Masters (Coursework) from the University of New South Wales, and a Doctor of Philosophy from The University of Queensland in 2007, with a thesis on pore water exchange processes in offshore intertidal sandbanks. Before joining the University of Queensland, Badin held engineering and environmental management positions in local government, state government, not-for-profit organisations, and professional engineering consulting firms. In his current role, he leads a research program focused on the sustainable management of water resources and aquatic ecosystems, applying industry experience through collaborations with water management agencies to inform decision-making.

Badin Gibbes's research quantifies water flows, sediment transport, and contaminants in systems from upland rivers and streams to lakes, estuaries, near-coastal oceans, and connected groundwater systems. He uses a multi-disciplinary approach combining environmental monitoring and numerical models to assess factors affecting water quality and ecosystem health. His specializations include environmental hydrology and water resources, particularly hydrodynamic and bio-geochemical processes in lakes and reservoirs; surface water-groundwater interactions; and contaminant transport and fate of substances like sediments, nutrients, pathogens, heat, and salt. Notable publications include "Coupling effects of tide and salting-out on perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS) transport and adsorption in a coastal aquifer" (2022, Advances in Water Resources), "A modelling approach for addressing sensitivity and uncertainty of estuarine greenhouse gas (CO₂ and CH₄) dynamics" (2022, Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences), "Developing best practice guidelines for lake modelling to inform quantitative microbial risk assessment" (2022, Environmental Modelling and Software), and "Evaluating the effect of data-richness and model complexity in the prediction of coastal sediment loading in Solomon Islands" (2020, Environmental Research Letters). He contributes to undergraduate and postgraduate teaching in environmental engineering, hydrology, environmental risk assessment, and surface/groundwater modelling, and supervises students on environmental hydrology and climate impacts. His work is funded through projects such as the Estuarine Modelling Pilot for GBR Catchments (2024-2028, Queensland Government) and various ARC Linkage and Seqwater initiatives.