Javier López Lara, Head of Hydrodynamics and Coastal Infrastructures Group at IHCantabria, has been elected as a Leadership Team Member of the Committee on Coastal and Maritime Hydraulics (CMH) at the International Association for Hydro-Environment Engineering and Research (IAHR)

Javier López Lara, associate professor in University of Cantabria and Head of Hydrodynamics and Coastal Infrastructures Group at IHCantabria, has been elected as a Leadership Team Member of the Committee on Coastal and Maritime Hydraulics (CMH) at the International Association for Hydro-Environment Engineering and Research (IAHR).

IAHR and CMH Committee

The International Association for Hydro-Environment Engineering and Research (IAHR), founded in 1935, is a worldwide independent organization of engineers and water specialists working in fields related to the hydro-environmental sciences and their practical application.

IAHR promotes the development of Technical Divisions that provide the operational framework for the Committees, such as the Coastal and Maritime Hydraulics (CMH), which cater to the scientific and engineering needs of its members.

The Committees are composed of IAHR members who are professionally active in one or more fields of the Committee’s specialization, and the Committees regularly organize conferences and symposia in their own specific fields; provide a base for collaboration in working groups on specific research themes and development monographs, etc.

In particular, the Committee on Coastal and Maritime Hydraulics (CMH), where Javier will serve on, deals with all aspects of offshore, coastal, and estuarine hydraulics pertaining to: natural processes, fluid interaction with structures, environmental impact, and shoreline erosion management. Its activity focuses on topics such as: waves and currents, effect of boundaries, sedimentation and coastal morphology, sea level change and relevant environmental issues.

Javier Lopez Lara

Javier is currently the Head of the Hydrodynamics and Coastal Infrastructures Group of IHCantabria, which has 16 members. He has developed his research in the field of wave hydrodynamics, specializing also surf zone hydrodynamics and wave-structure interactions, using both experimental and numerical methods, mainly CFD codes. He is the leader of the development of IH2VOF (ih2vof.ihcantabria.com) and IHFOAM (ihfoam.ihcantabria.com) CFD models. In recent years he has extended his research to reliability analysis of coastal structures, hydrodynamics of aquatic ecosystems, environmental flows and hydraulics. As a member of the IAHR, he has actively collaborated with the CMH by co-chairing Coastlab18 conference among other activities.

Through his research, he was awarded the Modesto Vigueras Prize 2004, granted by the Technical Association of Ports and Coastal Areas, Spanish branch of the International Ports Association (PIANC) and the International Research Prize “Paepe-Willems” (PIANC), in 2005, granted to researchers under 40 years old.

Javier is currently Principal Investigator in several projects funded by the Spanish Science Ministry, competitive projects financed by the Spanish Innnovation Ministry and different EU Projects. He has published 55 SCI research papers and 8 book chapters. He has advised 45 MSc and bachelor thesis and 14 PhD dissertations. He has coauthored more than one hundred national and international congress communications.