Rate My Professor Heidi Nepf

Heidi Nepf is the Donald and Martha Harleman Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), within the School of Engineering. She earned a B.S. from Bucknell University in 1987, an M.S. in 1988, and a Ph.D. in Civil Engineering in 1992 from Stanford University. Following a postdoctoral fellowship at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, she joined MIT in 1993, where she directs the Nepf Lab and teaches courses in fluid mechanics, surface water transport processes, and physical limnology.

Nepf's research examines the interaction of turbulent flows with aquatic vegetation and the resulting feedbacks to sediment transport, chemical flux, and ecosystem function in rivers, wetlands, lakes, and coastal zones. The Nepf Lab develops predictive models for physical processes that govern how vegetated habitats—such as seagrasses, salt marshes, and mangroves—provide coastal protection, mitigate anthropogenic nutrient and pollutant loads, and act as blue carbon reservoirs. These models support improved management of natural resources and design of green infrastructure. Nepf is internationally recognized for her contributions to this field and has served on the Fluid Mechanics Steering Committee of the International Association for Hydro-Environment Engineering and Research (IAHR), editorial boards of Water Resources Research, Limnology and Oceanography, Environmental Fluid Mechanics, and Journal of Hydraulic Engineering, and a National Research Council panel reviewing U.S. Army Corps of Engineers plans for Louisiana coastal restoration and protection.

Her accolades include the IAHR M. Salim Yalin Lifetime Achievement Award (2023), ASCE Hunter Rouse Hydraulic Engineering Award (2019), American Geophysical Union Fellowship (2018), Chi Epsilon Honor Member (2017), Harold Jan Schoemaker Award (2013), and National Science Foundation CAREER Award. Highly cited publications encompass "Drag, turbulence, and diffusion in flow through emergent vegetation" (Water Resources Research, 1999), "Flow and transport in regions with aquatic vegetation" (Annual Review of Fluid Mechanics, 2012), "Flow structure in depth-limited, vegetated flow" (Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans, 2000), "Mixing layers and coherent structures in vegetated aquatic flows" (Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans, 2002), and "Hydrodynamics of vegetated channels" (Journal of Hydraulic Research, 2012). Her work has profoundly shaped understanding and modeling of vegetated aquatic flows.