Rate My Professor Marco Ghisalberti

Marco Ghisalberti is an Associate Professor in the School of Engineering at the University of Western Australia, where he specializes in environmental fluid mechanics. He earned a BSc in Chemistry and BE in Environmental Engineering (Honours) from the University of Western Australia in 1998 and a PhD in Environmental Fluid Mechanics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2005. Following his doctorate, he completed a postdoctoral fellowship at UWA from 2005 to 2008 and advanced to lecturer and senior lecturer positions there. In 2014, he served as Visiting Associate Professor at MIT. From 2015 to 2018, he was at the University of Melbourne's School of Electrical, Mechanical and Infrastructure Engineering, chairing the Master of Engineering (Environmental) and Master of Environmental Engineering programs. He returned to UWA in 2018 and is affiliated with the Oceans Graduate School, managing hydraulics and geophysical fluid dynamics laboratories.

Ghisalberti's research focuses on flow, turbulence, transport processes, and biophysical coupling in ecosystems such as seagrass meadows, coral reefs, kelp forests, island wakes, and permeable sediments. His expertise includes environmental hydraulics, canopy flows, nature-based solutions for coastal protection, sediment transport, and experimental fluid mechanics. Notable publications include 'Mixing layers and coherent structures in vegetated aquatic flows' (Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans, 2002), 'The Structure of the Shear Layer in Flows over Rigid and Flexible Canopies' (Environmental Fluid Mechanics, 2006), and 'Obstructed Shear Flows: Similarities across Systems and Scales' (Journal of Fluid Mechanics, 2009). With over 6,500 citations and an h-index of 36 on Google Scholar, his contributions have substantially impacted the field. He serves as Associate Editor for Environmental Fluid Mechanics since 2020 and has received the Australian Award for University Teaching Citation (2020), UWA Award for Excellence in Teaching (2020), and multiple UWA School of Engineering teaching excellence awards (2008, 2010, 2019, 2024, 2025).