ASCE has honored Ayse Kilic, Ph.D., A.M.ASCE, with the 2024 Margaret S. Petersen Award for exemplary service to the water resources and environmental science communities through her research and development of globally used satellite-based evapotranspiration applications and her effective university teaching in GIS, hydrology, and remote sensing.
Kilic, professor of civil engineering in the School of Natural Resources at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln (UNL), is a leading expert in water resources engineering and has provided exemplary service to the water resources and environmental sciences communities through teaching, service to the University, ASCE, and EWRI, and through mentoring of women students, staff, professionals, and faculty. She has significantly advanced the state-of-the-art in water resource engineering technologies. Kilic’s work has led to the first freely available web tools to process satellite data to calculate evapotranspiration (loss of surface moisture back to the atmosphere) for the entire globe with 30-meter square resolution and to also understand water consumption.
She has provided guidance to federal agencies, such as NASA and USGS, and advises national research programs in Brazil, Chile, Turkey, Spain, India, and China. Her work was recognized with the William T. Pecora Award from the U.S. Department of the Interior and NASA. She has also contributed to a wide suite of hydrological tools for computer mapping via widely available graphic information systems (GIS).
Kilic has taught, inspired, and mentored hundreds of students, work for which she received the Holling Family Distinguished Senior Faculty Teaching Award from UNL. Additionally, she has served on and led several impactful EWRI committees related to evapotranspiration and irrigation. Kilic’s wide impacts on the field truly embody the memory of Margaret S. Petersen.
The Margaret S. Petersen Award recognizes a female member of ASCE or EWRI who has demonstrated exemplary service to the water resources and environmental science and engineering community.
