MICHAEL ERNEST BARBER portrait
  • Professor, Civil And Environmental Engin
801-581-6931

Education

  • B.S.C.E., Civil Engineering, University of New Hampshire
  • M.S.C.E, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Purdue University
  • Ph.D., Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Texas - Austin

Biography

Dr. Michael Barber is Professor and Chair of Civil and Environmental Engineering (CvEEN) at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, Utah. Michael has three degrees in Civil Engineering beginning with his BS from the University of New Hampshire, MS from Purdue University, and PhD from the University of Texas-Austin. He has over 30 years of experience in hydrology and water resources working in academics and in private consulting.  His responsibilities include administering the CvEEN Department, teaching undergraduate and graduate classes, developing externally funded research proposals and budgets, advising and supervising undergraduate and graduate students, mentoring and publishing technical papers.  He has taught courses in water resources, surface water hydrology, sediment transport, open channel flow, surface water contaminant transport, hydraulic design, and ecological modeling.  Dr. Barber’s research has field investigations and numerical modeling studies of water, nutrients, and primary productivity in rivers and lakes with focus on stream-groundwater interaction, climate change implications, and human adaptation.  He is currently working on investigation of climate change impacts on water quantity and quality, understanding the impacts of bioenergy on water demand, and groundwater modeling of aquifer storage and recovery for increasing water availability.  Michael is very involved in multi-stakeholder projects where consensus building and information transfer are vital components of the research.