Kristen Dena Marie Splinter

Professor Kristen Splinter is Managing Director of the world-renowned Water Research Laboratory (WRL). She leads a team of academics and engineers at WRL, which is based within the School and is a unique UNSW facility that melds together industry leading and blue sky research. Kristen's area of expertise is in Coastal Engineering. Her research covers broad topics including storm to inter-annual shoreline change monitoring and modelling; coastal erosion and beach recovery; dune erosion; remote sensing of the coastal environment and machine learning applications. She is part of a dynamic and growing group within WRLCoastal alongside fellow researchers A/Prof. Mitch Harley and Prof. Ian Turner. Her group currently jointly supervises a number of PhD students, post-docs, Masters and Honours theses as well as international interns. Kristen is a Chief Investigator for the new UNSW-led Centre of Excellence Our Future Oceans, which has received $35 million from the Australian Research Council to investigate and manage rapidly changing ocean systems. She holds a leadership position as part of the Centre Executive as the EDI Lead and is the Research Lead for RP3.1 Coastal Hazards and Adaptation. The Centre will comprehensively determine how oceans are changing, now and in the future, and develop solutions to promote ocean sustainability and a thriving blue economy. This represents a once-in-a-generation opportunity for Australia’s coastal engineering discipline to shape the long-term sustainability and prosperity of coastlines across the globe. Kristen holds a Bachelors in Civil Engineering from Queen's University (Canada), Masters in Coastal and Oceanographic Engineering from University of Florida (USA); and a PhD in Geological Oceanography as well as a Certificate in Marine Resource Management from Oregon State University (USA). Prior to her position at UNSW Sydney (2011-present) she spent 2 years as a Research Fellow at the Griffith Centre for Coastal Management (Australia). As a female engineer, Kristen has a strong desire to support and encourage more women into the discipline. She currently advocates for better gender equity within her discipline as a member of the Women in Coastal Geosciences and Engineering (WICGE). Kristen also serves as Chair of the Engineers Australia NSW Coasts, Oceans, and Ports Engineering Panel (COPEP), and is a Senior Editor for Cambridge Prisms: Coastal Futures. She is also the co-founder of the Comomola seminar series with A/P Giovanni Coco – bringing machine learning and coastal processes research together. My area of expertise is in Coastal Engineering. My research covers broad topics including storm to inter-annual shoreline change monitoring and modelling; coastal erosion and beach recovery; dune erosion; remote sensing of the coastal environment; and reef-top hydrodynamics.