On May 1, 2024, Prof. Qiuwen CHEN, Director of Eco-Environmental Research Department of Nanjing Hydraulic Research Institute, was elected as Chair of the Technical Committee on Global Water Security (TCGWS), the International Association for Hydro-Environment Engineering and Research (IAHR). TCGWS generates scholars from around the world who concern about the science of water security, aiming to address the scientific and technical issues of water and sediments in catchments, rivers, urban systems, groundwater systems, estuaries, coastal regions and seas. Their key research topics include hydro-environmental assessment and prediction, hydro-epidemiological processes and their modelling, hydro-biological processes and their modelling, and climate change effects on the key elements of water security, etc.

Prof. CHEN has been engaged in ecohydraulics research for a long time, and has made outstanding achievements in the impacts of river damming on biogeochemical cycle and fish habitats as well as driving mechanisms, and engineering regulation measures. He has published 403 research papers in journals including Nature Reviews Earth & Environment, Reviews of Geophysics, National Science Review, Science Bulletin, Engineering, etc. and 4 monographs, and obtained over 60 authorized invention patents. He is the academic leader of the Science Fund for Creative Research Groups of the National Natural Science Foundation of China, and is supported by the National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars of China and National High-Level Talent Special Support Programs (10,000 Talents Program). He has won 1 Second Prize of National Science and Technology Progress Award, 9 First Prizes at provincial or ministerial level, 3 Creative Groups Awards, National Innovation Forefront Award, IAHR Arthur Thomas Ippen Award, and the Xplorer Prize.

Prof. CHEN was invited by IAHR to serve twice as associate editor of Journal of Ecohydraulics. The Journal, founded in 2015, embodies the varied research undertaken in ecohydraulics covering water resources and aquatic life, ecology, geoscience, environmental science, climate change and other related fields, with an emphasis on the integration of these disciplines.