Dr. Ali Ameli, Assistant Professor and Principal Investigator of the HydroGeoScience For Watershed Management Lab at the Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences, has received the Young Scientist Award by the Canadian Geophysical Union (CGU) – the highest honor of CGU for early-career scientists, awarded to only one recipient each year. 

This prestigious Union-Level senior award recognizes outstanding research contributions to Geophysics, including Biogeosciences, Hydrological Sciences, Geodesy, and Solid Earth, by an early-career scientist (within 10 years of obtaining a Ph.D.). At the award ceremony, CGU President highlighted Dr. Ameli’s work as follows: 

"Since completing his PhD, Dr. Ameli has continued to push the frontiers of hydrology through deep theoretical insights, creative modeling approaches, and a strong commitment to addressing real-world water challenges. His research bridges gaps between theory, observation, modeling, and large-sample synthesis—producing tools and frameworks that quantify streamflow generation mechanisms, water storage dynamics, and hydrologic connectivity across a wide range of landscapes. Importantly, his work has advanced a new hydrologic theory of both stormflow and baseflow generation, with major implications for understanding flow processes in ungauged basins. These contributions extend beyond the hillslope-dominated landscapes that have long underpinned hydrologic theory to include wetland-rich systems, where a mechanistic understanding remains limited but is urgently needed.

Dr. Ameli’s research has laid the foundation for interdisciplinary work at the interface of hydrology, geochemistry, and watershed management. His ability to bridge theoretical and applied hydrology has made him a valued collaborator among international scientists and policymakers. He has addressed critical challenges related to land use, forestry, and agricultural impacts on water quality, and his work has informed environmental policy related to flood and drought risk. He is also helping lead the field into the era of big data—developing new statistical and machine-learning tools to identify and generalize hydrologic processes across scales, thereby advancing efforts to build a more transferable hydrologic science. Despite being extremely deliberate and rigorous in ensuring the quality, originality, and impact of his research, Ali has far exceeded expectations in terms of productivity—publishing 30 peer-reviewed articles to date, leading 20 of them, including eight in Water Resources Research, the flagship journal of our discipline. His trainees have received prestigious scholarships, and many have gone on to pursue advanced research and academic careers at leading institutions, including Stanford, Columbia, Caltech, and Harvard. His remarkable record of achievement, leadership, and mentorship at this early stage of his career makes him a truly deserving recipient of the Canadian Geophysical Union’s Young Scientist Award.”

To learn more about Dr. Ameli's research, please click here: HydroGeoScience For Watershed Management Laboratory

Congrats, Dr. Ameli!