Dr. David Mohrig holds the Peter T. Flawn Centennial Chair in Geology at The University of Texas at Austin, where he has been on the faculty since 2006, after spending five years on the MIT faculty and another five years as an industry geoscientist.
David's research focuses on the flow of solids across planetary surfaces and the transport processes modulating this flow, leading to erosion and sedimentation that evolves terrestrial, submarine, and extraterrestrial landscapes. He studies topography generated at the interface between a static bed and a moving fluid at very short to very long time and space scales, with particular emphasis on processes controlling channel and coastline formation. He has experience leading large integrated teams of geoscientists, engineers, oceanographers, ecologists, and economists studying land building and loss in the Mississippi Delta, as well as using successive high-resolution topographic surveys to study shoreline change associated with tropical cyclones and other storms. Recent work highlights the responses of coastal rivers and deltas, barrier islands, and coastal plains to both naturally occurring and anthropogenic change.
David received his B.A. from Pomona College, and his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Washington, Seattle. He was awarded the 2019 Francis J. Pettijohn Medal for Sedimentology by the Society for Sedimentary Geology (SEPM) and the 2021 G.K. Gilbert Award in Surface Processes by the American Geophysical Union. His research is inspired by the many undergraduate and graduate students he has collaborated with throughout the years.