Early Career Spotlight: October 2026

Tell us about yourself:

I am an Assistant Professor at EPFL in Lausanne, Switzerland, where I lead the Sustainable River Engineering, Energy, and Morphodynamics (STREEM) Lab. I grew up in Mantova, a small city in northern Italy right in the heart of the Po River floodplain, roughly halfway between Milan and Venice. It is a beautiful little gem that tends to fly somewhat under the radar of international tourism.

I moved north to Trento, in the middle of the Italian Alps, to study Environmental Engineering. In high school, I loved physics, mathematics, and chemistry, but I was also increasingly concerned about environmental problems such as pollution, so Environmental Engineering seemed like a good way of combining the two.

During my Master's, I became particularly interested in hydraulics and renewable energy. For my thesis, I had the opportunity to go to the St. Anthony Falls Laboratory at the University of Minnesota to work on a project that combined exactly those two interests. I enjoyed the experience so much that, when I was offered the opportunity to continue the work as a PhD, I stayed. What was initially supposed to be a few months in Minnesota somehow turned into several years—and a PhD.

After graduating, I moved to Tennessee, where I worked first as a postdoc and later as a research scientist at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, a U.S. Department of Energy national laboratory. There, my work shifted more toward conventional hydropower and its environmental interactions. Eventually, I crossed the Atlantic again and landed at EPFL, where I now get to combine many of these interests in my own research group.

What is your research about?

My research sits at the intersection of two broad areas: river engineering and renewable energy. On one side, I work on fundamental river processes—hydraulics, sediment transport, bedforms, and morphodynamics—and on the other, on water-based renewable energy technologies, particularly hydropower and hydrokinetic energy.

A big part of my geomorphology work focuses on how bedforms move and evolve, and how we can track them in two dimensions to better quantify sediment transport. I am also interested in morphodynamic forcing: how relatively localized disturbances to the flow can trigger, suppress, or redirect much larger river responses, such as bars and meanders.

My real niche is where these two areas overlap: understanding how energy infrastructure interacts with river processes, and whether those interactions can be deliberately designed to improve both energy production and river management.

What excites you about your research?

I am fascinated by the way rivers work. Their ability to constantly reshape themselves—and, over longer timescales, entire landscapes—still feels a little magical to me. I love river morphodynamics in all its forms, from small bedforms migrating along the riverbed to meandering channels slowly moving across a floodplain.

At the same time, I have always been drawn to renewable energy and to the challenge of developing cleaner ways to power our societies. The fun part for me is trying to make these two interests talk to each other. It is admittedly a slightly unconventional idea: what if water-based renewable energy technologies could do more than simply produce electricity? Could we design them to work with river processes—to reduce erosion, redirect flow, or even support restoration? That possibility is probably what keeps me most curious about where this research can go.

What broader importance does your research have for society?

I see the broader societal relevance of my research along exactly the two fronts I mentioned earlier. The first is energy. Conventional hydropower will remain an important part of the renewable mix because it can provide reliable, flexible, and dispatchable generation that complements more intermittent sources such as wind and solar. Hydrokinetic energy offers a different opportunity: modular, distributed generation that can be deployed locally, with relatively little infrastructure, including in remote or underserved communities.

The second is how we manage rivers. Rivers are under growing pressure from urbanization, infrastructure, sediment imbalance, and climate change, while floods, droughts, and changing flow regimes are making many traditional, rigid engineering approaches increasingly difficult to sustain. We need strategies that are more adaptive and that work with natural river processes rather than constantly trying to suppress them. Climate change makes both challenges—the energy transition and sustainable river management—more urgent, and I think there is a real opportunity to address them together.

What inspired you to pursue a career in Earth Science?

I am not sure I ever consciously decided to pursue a career in Earth Science. Growing up along the Po River, I always felt very connected to nature and, more specifically, to rivers, so perhaps the ingredients were already there. During my studies in Trento, I was lucky to have some excellent professors in hydraulics and river morphodynamics, and their enthusiasm was contagious.

That interest became much more tangible once I started doing research myself. Working with flume experiments, sediment transport, and bedform analysis meant that I could actually watch these processes happen, perturb them, measure them, and then try to figure out what the river was doing. I think that is when my interest in hydraulics naturally grew into a broader fascination with river morphodynamics and Earth-surface processes. At that point, I was pretty much hooked.

What are your short and/or long-term goals in your EPSP journey?

In the short term, a lot of my energy is going into building STREEM at EPFL—developing the experimental capabilities of the lab, growing the team, and establishing new collaborations, especially with people who bring expertise different from my own. And, of course, doing good science, finding enough funding to keep all of this going, and eventually getting tenure would all be quite useful!
In the longer term, I would like to build a research group where students and early-career researchers have the freedom and support to develop their own ideas and become independent scientists. Being a good mentor is one of the parts of this job that matters most to me—not only scientifically, but also on the human side. I want STREEM to be a place where people feel supported as scientists and as people, and where ambitious research does not have to come at the expense of enjoying the process. I have been fortunate to have great mentors and collaborators throughout my career, and I would like to pass some of that on. If we can ask interesting questions, cross a few disciplinary boundaries, and still have fun along the way, I will be pretty happy with where the journey takes us.

Given unlimited funding and access to resources, what is your dream project that you would pursue?

If funding and resources were truly unlimited, I would probably spend a good portion of them building the experimental facility of my dreams. I would love to observe river morphodynamics almost as if we could “see everything”: flow, turbulence, sediment transport, and evolving bed topography, all measured simultaneously and at very high spatial and temporal resolution.

A big part of that would be developing new measurement systems, such as high-resolution underwater laser scanning for the riverbed. But the real dream would be to take these technologies beyond the lab. I would like to push them toward robust, open-source instruments that could eventually be deployed in real rivers. Being able to measure natural morphodynamic processes in the field with anything close to the resolution we can achieve in the laboratory would open up a completely different way of studying rivers.

What else do you do? Any hobbies or interests outside of work?

Soccer was my big passion growing up and, naturally, I was absolutely convinced that a career in Serie A was just a matter of time. I’m joking, of course—my enthusiasm was not strongly supported by the evidence on the field, and a growing list of minor injuries eventually caught up with me too.

These days, road cycling has taken over as my main hobby. I love long rides, especially if they involve climbing hills for no particularly good reason. More generally, I just really enjoy being outdoors. Hiking, camping, being somewhere in the middle of nature—that is usually my idea of a good weekend.

During grad school in Minnesota, some of my favorite trips were to the Boundary Waters, where you can spend a few days canoeing and camping and feel completely disconnected from everything. East Tennessee was also an amazing place for that kind of lifestyle. And now I live in Switzerland, which is basically a natural wonderland, so I definitely cannot complain: biking, hiking, mountains everywhere, and I have also added skiing to the list.

When I am not trying to exhaust myself outdoors, I really enjoy spending quality time with my wife. We like cooking together and, with equal dedication, trying to stay up to date with an ever-growing list of TV series.

Visit Mirko's website: 

https://www.mirkomusa.com