Rate My Professor Avril Horne

Professor Avril Horne is an Associate Professor in the Department of Infrastructure Engineering at the University of Melbourne, part of the Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology. She is recognized as a water policy specialist with a unique combination of over twenty years' experience across economics, hydrology, and policy. Horne earned her Doctorate and Bachelor's Degree from the University of Melbourne. In her current role, she serves as the group leader of the Managing Variability and Change Lab, which specializes in multidisciplinary applied research to improve water management decisions under uncertainty. The lab addresses challenges in catchment hydrology, environmental health, and incorporating climate risks into policy and decision science. She also leads the University of Melbourne's Invergowrie internship program, fostering real-world problem-solving for students in regional communities facing applied challenges like climate change impacts.

Horne's research centers on environmental water outcomes, climate change adaptation for freshwater ecosystems, optimization of environmental flows, stress testing of water allocations in large river basins, and participatory stakeholder engagement for better monitoring and management. She is a DECRA Fellow funded by the Australian Research Council (DE180100550). Her scholarly contributions include highly cited works such as 'The Brisbane Declaration and Global Action Agenda on Environmental Flows' (Frontiers in Environmental Science, 2018), 'Prepare River Ecosystems for an Uncertain Future' (Nature, 2019), 'Water for the Environment: From Policy and Science to Implementation and Management' (Academic Press, 2017), 'Modeling Flow-Ecology Responses in the Anthropocene: Challenges for Sustainable Riverine Management' (BioScience, 2019), 'Optimization Tools for Environmental Water Decisions: A Review of Strengths, Weaknesses, and Opportunities to Improve Adoption' (Environmental Modelling & Software, 2016), and 'High Flow Management as Climate Change Adaptation for Freshwater Ecosystems in Regulated Rivers' (2024). Horne contributes to key projects including vulnerabilities for environmental water outcomes in changing climates, preserving rivers through environmental water use, and developing people-centric climate tools for the Murray-Darling Basin. She teaches courses such as Introduction to Sustainable Water Management (ENEN30002).