PhD wins prestigious award

CRC PhD student Ashley Wright has been recognised for his excellent contributions to flood research by Monash University.

Ashley won the Eric Laurenson Medal, which is awarded annually to a recent PhD graduate of Monash University who has written an excellent thesis, communicated their research findings to industry and has research utilisation potential in water science, engineering or management.

“It definitely was a shock,” Ashley said.

Ashley’s student project, Improving flood forecast skill using remote sensing data has used data gathered from historic rainfall to investigate how to reduce the damage caused by floods and improve flood forecasting.

“The award gives me confidence that my work is meaningful and of high quality,” Ashley said.

Ashley was supervised by A/Prof Valentijn Pauwels and Prof Jeffrey Walker.

A/Prof Pauwels said Ashley’s research was innovative and of an excellent quality - some of the reasons he won the prestigious award.

Ashley has since taken up an opportunity with Monash University to investigate flood monitoring and modelling in Indonesia and Fiji.

He will join the broader CRC project on flood forecasting and remote sensing as a research fellow in October this year.