Tuesday, May 12th
Dr. Steven P Loheide II, 2026 Darcy Lecturer
Dr. Steven Loheide is the Distinguished Professor of Water Resources Engineering in Civil and Environmental Engineering, Geological Engineering, Freshwater and Marine Sciences and Water Resource Management at the University of Wisconsin – Madison. He received his BS in Environmental Chemistry and Geology from the University of Northern Iowa (1999), MS in Geology from Indiana University (2001), and PhD in Hydrogeology from Stanford University (2006). As an ecohydrologist, Loheide’s research focuses on the interactions between ecological and hydrological processes in natural and built systems with special attention to the role of groundwater. His approaches use a combination of field data, remote sensing, and numerical modeling to understand the feedback between vegetation patterning, plant water use, soil moisture availability, groundwater regimes, stream-aquifer interactions, and agricultural and urban water management. This work is focused on improving the scientific basis for stream, floodplain, meadow, and wetland restoration efforts; quantifying the provisioning of hydrologic ecosystem services under current and future scenarios; and evaluating interactions among groundwater and urban, agricultural, and natural environments.
Wednesday, May 13th
Dr. John Cherry
Dr. John Cherry is a Distinguished Emeritus Professor, Department of Earth and Environmental Science, University of Waterloo, Canada and an Honorary Professor, University of Hong Kong. His research pioneered the field of “contaminant hydrogeology”. He received the Singapore (Lee Kuan Yew) Water Prize in 2016 and the Stockholm Water Prize in 2020. He holds geological engineering degrees from University of Saskatchewan and University of California Berkeley, and a PhD in hydrogeology, University of Illinois. He co-authored the textbook “Groundwater” with R.A. Freeze (1979) and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, a Foreign Member of the U.S. Academy of Engineering. He was Chair of the Canadian Expert Panel on the environmental impacts of shale gas development. He has received many awards and honors from Canada, USA, UK, and Switzerland. He is the Founder and Leader of the Groundwater Project, a philanthropic educational NGO based in Canada for creating free educational materials prepared by experts and translated in many languages for groundwater education globally.