Bio
Dr. Shih-Chieh Kao is a Distinguished R&D Staff Member in the Environmental Science Division at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). He also serves as Program Manager for the ORNL Water Power Program, overseeing a broad portfolio of research projects supported by the Department of Energy (DOE) Hydropower and Hydrokinetic Office (H2O). His research interests include high-performance computing, hydrologic modeling, flood inundation simulation, hydroclimate impact assessment, and hydropower resource evaluation. Since 2011, he has led the SECURE Water Act Section 9505 Assessment, which evaluates the impacts of long-term changes in water availability for hydropower production across the United States.
Dr. Kao is a co-creator of the TRITON inundation model and the Dayflow streamflow reanalysis dataset. He has served as a frequent reviewer for more than 20 scientific and engineering journals and has received numerous honors, including the 2008 Purdue Civil Engineering Best Dissertation Award, the 2009 Journal of Hydrologic Engineering Outstanding Reviewer Award, the 2013 International Commission on Statistical Hydrology Best Paper Award, and the 2020 Platform for Advanced Scientific Computing Best Paper Award. In 2023, he was elected a Fellow of the American Society of Civil Engineers-Environmental and Water Resources Institute (ASCE-EWRI). Dr. Kao also served on a National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) committee that developed recommendations for modernizing probable maximum precipitation estimation under a changing climate.
Education
Ph.D., Civil Engineering, Purdue University, May 2008
M.S., Civil Engineering, National Taiwan University, June 2001
B.S., Civil Engineering, National Taiwan University, June 1999