Video portrait Hector Fellow Prof. Dr.-Ing. Franz Nestman

Water and River Basin Manage­ment — Research and Appli­ca­tion with Nature and for People

Prof. Dr.-Ing. Franz Nestmann headed the Insti­tute of Water and River Engineer­ing at the Karlsruhe Insti­tute of Technol­ogy (KIT) from 1994 to 2021. In 2009, he received the Hector Science Award, and, since 2013, he has been a member of the Hector Fellow Academy. Nestmann's scien­tific work focuses on water. The construc­tion and optimiza­tion of hydropower plants and the supply of water to people in remote regions abroad have always been a partic­u­lar focus.

As an engineer, Franz Nestmann is in demand as an expert through­out Germany. But in the course of his profes­sional career, Nestmann has also been involved in the supply of drink­ing water or coastal protec­tion world­wide. He achieved inter­na­tional promi­nence primar­ily through projects in Indone­sia, Vietnam, India and Pakistan. Due to climate change, floods and droughts are becom­ing more frequent, which also affects the local ecosys­tem of flowing waters.

Andreas Müller is doing his doctor­ate at the Insti­tute of Water and River Devel­op­ment on the "Water­course-struc­tur­ing and bank-protect­ing effect of river fixtures" and is funded by the Hector Fellow Academy. With his research, he wants to contribute to the fact that flora and fauna can be supported by fixtures and that, for example, differ­ent habitats can be created for fish in the river.

The Hector Fellow Academy is a young science academy, founded in 2013 to estab­lish a network for the Hector Science Awardees who have been recog­nized for their outstand­ing research and teach­ing in the STEM subjects, medicine or psychol­ogy. On the one hand, the HFA facil­i­tates inter­dis­ci­pli­nary projects between the HFA members. Second, the HFA offers doctoral positions with these Hector Fellows. By connect­ing outstand­ing scien­tists from differ­ent disci­plines and insti­tu­tions, the Hector Fellow Academy creates impulses for innov­a­tive projects, initi­ates socio-polit­i­cal discourses and contributes to solving global challenges. At the same time, it strength­ens Germany as a center of science and research.