Professor Andrea Rinaldo, engineer and hydrologist, joined the CMCC Foundation in March 2025 as a Senior Fellow at the ICR Institute of Climate Resilience.

Prof. Rinaldo holds a Degree in Hydraulic Engineering from the University of Padua (IT) where he graduated with the highest honours in 1978. In 1983, he obtained his PhD (Fluid Mechanics) at Purdue University (US).  In 2014, he was awarded a PhD Honoris Causa by the Université du Québec-Laval & INRS (CA) and in 2024 the University of Trento (IT) awarded him the Degree Honoris Causa in Environmental Engineering.

In 1986 he became Full Professor of Hydraulic Constructions at the University of Trento (IT). From 1992 to 2002, he worked as research fellow and visiting Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering; from 2004 to 2006, he was an visiting professor at Princeton University. In 2008, he also became Professor and Director at the Laboratory of Ecohydrology at the Federal Polytechnic School of Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland.

On March 22, 2023, the Royal Swedish Academy awarded him the Stockholm Water Prize (commonly known as the Nobel Prize for Water), given to “a Swedish or foreign person for his or her outstanding contribution to the protection of the environment in the broadest sense or for having written illuminatingly on this subject.” Prof. Rinaldo is the first Italian who has received this prestigious award.

Since August 2024, Prof. Rinaldo is also the President of the “Istituto Veneto di Scienze Lettere ed Arti”, in Venice.