Andrea Cominola

HS Hydrological Sciences

The 2024 Division Outstanding Early Career Scientist Award is awarded to Andrea Cominola for outstanding research on data-driven behavioural modelling in coupled human-water systems.

Andrea Cominola is internationally recognised for his leadership and pioneering multi-disciplinary research, bridging hydrologic sciences, informatics, and systems engineering. His research resulted in outstanding contributions to data-driven modelling of water demands and investigations of human behaviour changes in relation to major environmental and water policy concerns such as water conservation and flood adaptation across spatio-temporal scales. Cominola has a unique signature across his research portfolio in terms of improving our understanding of coupled human-water systems while advancing our ability to exploit emerging heterogeneous data sources (e.g., digital meters, social networks) and modelling techniques (explainable machine learning). He is also committed to making research accessible to students/early career professionals: he initiated and leads the ide3a European university network to advance inter-disciplinary and international teaching and research on urban water and interconnected infrastructure systems.

Andrea Cominola is among the most active early career scientists of the EGU community in water policy and management. What further distinguishes Cominola is his commitment in serving the community, as evidenced by his leadership as Chair of the EGU Hydrological Sciences 5 sub-division on Water Policy, Management and Control since 2021. He served as a convener in international conferences, collected outstanding reviewer and early career research excellence accolades, and is active in multiple editorial boards. Lastly, Cominola has shown great ability in transferring scientific knowledge across disciplines and outside academia, creating trustworthy partnerships all over the world with governmental institutions (e.g., 2022 report on Climate change, infrastructure and mobility for the Italian Government), public water companies (e.g., Global Omnium) and geoscience centres (e.g., GFZ Potsdam).

Andrea Cominola is a rising star with an extraordinary record in research, education, mentorship, and service. All of this makes Andrea Cominola an outstanding early career scientist, and a worthy recipient of the Outstanding Early Career Award of the Hydrological Sciences Division.