Jesús Carrera Ramirez - Curriculum Vitae#
Jesús Carrera was born in Vigo (Spain) in 1957. He is married and has got three children. He is Civil Engineer by the Technical University of Madrid (1979) and worked as a structural engineer at “Dragados y Construcciones” until he moved to the University of Arizona. There, he got his PhD in Hydrology (1984) and worked as hydrogeologist at HydroGeoChem, inc. He then moved to the Technical University of Catalonia (UPC), where he became full professor in 1992, and formed the Groundwater Hydrology Group (GHS). He has been vicedean (1986-1989) and dean (1992-1994) of Civil Engineering and vicepresident for research of the university (1994-1998). He has co-authored more than 400 publications, including some 200 in international refereed journals.
His has concentrated on groundwater modeling with emphasis on the inverse problem (estimation of groundwater parameters so as to make sure that model simulations reproduce actual measurements) and reactive transport (simulate the movement of contaminants in aquifers including chemical reactions with other solutes and the solid phase). With members of GHS, he developed codes for inverse modeling of flow (INVERT), flow and transport (TRANSIN), conjunctive management of surface and groundwater (COGERE), network design (KRINET), multiphase non-isothermal flow (CODEBRIGHT), reactive transport (RETRASO), etc. The GHS group has applied these codes to numerous problems worldwide on topics ranging from water resources assessment to, nuclear waste disposal, CO2 storage, geothermal energy, groundwater pollution, seawater intrusion, artificial recharge or induced seismicity.
These applications led to a number of questions regarding the effects of heterogeneity especially in low permeability media and motivated that, in recent years, he has concentrated on basic research issues. Questions addressed by the group include the scale dependence of hydraulic conductivity, the search for an effective transport equation (acknowledging that mixing and spreading are different processes), the meaning of parameters derived from conventional hydraulic tests. We have also explained the paradoxes on the time and directional dependence of porosity.
His experience has gained significantly from collaboration with third world aid organizations on projects in Ethiopia, Burkina Fasso, Peru and Cambodia. He has participated on a number of advisory boards: National Water Council of Spain, Nature Protection Council of the Catalonian government, the scientific committee for the water transfer from the Ronne River to Barcelona, etc.
