Larry Weber is a professor of civil and environmental engineering and the Edwin B. Green Chair in Hydraulics at the University of Iowa (UI). He leads the Iowa Watershed Approach, a five-year, statewide research project to enhance Iowa’s flood resilience and water quality. He is also the co-founder of the Iowa Flood Center, co-founder of the Iowa Nutrient Research Center and served as director of IIHR -- Hydroscience & Engineering, a century-old fluids-focused UI research center, for more than a decade.

Weber is considered a thought-leader on water resources program development throughout the state and across the country. Through these center-level activities I have developed research, educational and service programs of significant strength across the state with expertise ranging from drought to flood, connecting surface water and ground water processes to better understand and manage issues of water quantity and water quality. Additionally, the technology developed through this research has led to significant partnerships with state and federal agencies, and both environmental groups and agricultural commodity organizations.

As an educator, Weber teaches courses that focus on fish passage facility design, hydraulic structures, river mechanics and water resources. His research interests include watershed processes, water quality, flooding, river hydraulics, developing coupled hydrodynamic-ecological models to design complex ecosystem restoration projects, and applying computational fluid dynamics codes to natural river reaches and hydraulic structures.

Weber spends much of his free time on a personal conservation and restoration project on his property near Iowa City. The 100-acre “Old Man’s Timber” includes a restored stand of timber, a reconstructed tallgrass prairie, a pond, floodplain wetlands, remnant river oxbows, and a reconstructed and restored 19th-century barn.