Dr. Ian Acworth

Biography

Ian Acworth was the Gary Johnston Professor of Water Management and held a joint Chair in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering within the Faculty of Engineering and the School of Biology, Earth and Environmental Sciences in the Faculty of Science at UNSW. He served as Director of the Connected Waters Initiative Research Centre from 2006 to 2012, overseeing significant groundwater projects. His research interests focus on groundwater dynamics, hydrochemical processes, and coastal zones. He has developed field instrumentation and analytical methods for groundwater studies, utilizing electrical methods to investigate groundwater salinity and studying the relationship between palaeoclimate and dryland salinity. Since retiring in 2015, Professor Acworth has published extensively and is writing a major textbook on Groundwater Investigation. His research contributed to the New South Wales government's decision to buy back a mining license from Shenhua, halting the proposed Breeza open-cut coal mine. He has conducted extensive geological and hydrogeological investigations in the aquifers of the Liverpool Plains.

Research Interests