Prof. Wolfgang Kinzelbach was born in 1949 in Germersheim, Germany. He studied physics at the Universities of Mainz and Munich. At Stanford University he transferred to the field of environmental engineering in 1972. He earned his doctorate from the University of Karlsruhe in 1978. His professional activities have taken him to Maiduguri, Nigeria, the Nuclear Research Center in Karlsruhe, the Environmental Research Institute of the Academia Sinica in Beijing and Stuttgart University. In 1988 he was appointed full professor of Technical Hydraulics and Hydrology at the University of Kassel and in 1993 full professor of Environmental Physics at the University of Heidelberg. Since 1996 he has been full Professor of Hydromechanics and Water Resources Engineering at the ETH Zurich.

Prof. Kinzelbach's research concentrates on flow and transport processes in the environment with practical application in water resources management, pollution control, remediation and nuclear waste isolation. His current focus is on sustainable water management especially in arid and semi-arid regions, including projects in Botswana, Niger, Xinjiang (China), Uzbekistan and Tunisia.

He was awarded the Ehrensenator Huber Prize by the University of Karlsruhe, the European "Förderpreis" of the Körber Foundation, the Softwareprize of the German Federal Minister of Research and the Henry Darcy medal of the European Geophysical Society.