Fernando Miralles-Wilhelm
Professor and Interim Director, Earth System Science Interdisciplinary Center, University of Maryland
Dr. Fernando Miralles-Wilhelm is a hydrologist with research interests in modeling of surface and groundwater systems, climate-hydrology-vegetation interactions, water quality and modeling of the water-energy-food nexus. He has been a principal investigator in research sponsored by NASA, NOAA, NSF, USDA, USAID, the World Bank and other agencies, and has worked as a consultant in water resources projects in all five continents for more than 20 years.
Prior to his appointment at UMD, he served on the faculty at Northeastern University, the University of Miami, and Florida International University. He also spent five years as a civil servant in the Water and Sanitation Division of the Inter-American Development Bank in Washington, D.C.
He earned a mechanical engineering diploma from Universidad Simón Bolívar in Caracas, Venezuela (1987), a MS in engineering from the University of California, Irvine (1989), and a PhD in civil and environmental engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1993).
Miralles-Wilhelm is a fellow of the American Society of Civil Engineers, and a diplomate of the American Academy of Environmental Engineers and the American Academy of Water Resources Engineers. He is a registered professional engineer in the states of Massachusetts and Florida.
He lives in Bethesda, Maryland with his wife Monica, and is the father of two UMD Terps (Andrea, class of ’18 and Adriana, class of ’20). On nice sunny days, you will most likely find him playing tennis at NASA Goddard, or on the Capital Crescent Trail on his running shoes, his bike, roller blades or his Sector 9 longboard.