Efi Foufoula-Georgiou elected to the Royal Academy of Engineering
Sept. 24, 2026 — Efi Foufoula-Georgiou, Distinguished Professor of civil and environmental engineering and Samueli Endowed Chair in engineering at the University of California, Irvine, has been elected an international fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering.
She is among 75 new fellows elected this year to the United Kingdom-based Royal Academy of Engineering, which provides leadership in engineering and technology and independent expert advice to governments in the U.K. and beyond. Established in 1976, the academy includes roughly 1,700 fellows drawn from academic research, industry and entrepreneurship.
“I am deeply honored by this recognition. Having had the privilege of leading and participating in international research projects, including with colleagues in the U.K., I have seen how much we can achieve when science crosses borders,” said Foufoula-Georgiou. “I look forward to drawing on the strengths of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering and the Royal Academy of Engineering to help address shared challenges in water, climate and environmental resilience.”
Foufoula-Georgiou’s research in hydrology, hydroclimate science and geomorphology has advanced the understanding and prediction of precipitation, water-cycle extremes and landscape evolution. Her work on global satellite precipitation estimation and resilience planning for watersheds and coastal river deltas worldwide has applications to water sustainability and hazard mitigation.
Foufoula-Georgiou’s public service includes an appointment by President Barack Obama to the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board, where she contributed to reports to Congress on the long-term safety of nuclear waste transport and disposal. She has served on U.S. National Academies committees, including the Decadal Survey on Earth Observations from Space, and studies on the modernization of the National Weather Service and flood risk management of critical infrastructure. She has also held advisory roles for NASA, the National Science Foundation and European research councils.
Foufoula-Georgiou joined UC Irvine in 2016 following nearly three decades on the faculty at the University of Minnesota, where she served as director of the St. Anthony Falls Laboratory and director of the National Center for Earth-surface Dynamics, an NSF Science and Technology Center. At UC Irvine, she served as the associate dean for research and innovation in the Samueli School of Engineering from 2017 to 2023 and holds a courtesy appointment in the Department of Earth System Science.
Her honors include the John Dalton Medal of the European Geophysical Society, the Hydrologic Sciences Medal of the American Meteorological Society, the Horton Medal of the American Geophysical Union and the UNESCO/WMO Dooge Medal, an international hydrology prize. She is a fellow of AGU, AMS and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and she is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the European Academy of Sciences.
The Royal Academy of Engineering will welcome its new fellows at a celebration in London on Oct. 19.
- Brian Bell, UCI Communications
