Dr Cristina Solorzano Rivas

Cristina completed her first degree in Civil Engineering in Honduras, which neighbours her birth country of El Salvador. In 2000, she emigrated to Barcelona, Spain, where she worked as a hydraulics engineer, specialising in the surface and urban hydrology. Cristina also completed three postgraduate degrees to complement her engineering background, including Master of Business (Operations Management, 1999), Masters in Banking and Finance (2001), and a Graduate Certificate in Project and Works Management (2002). She also completed a second degree in Civil Engineering in 2012 to upgrade her qualifications. She moved to Australia in 2015, where she completed a Master of Science (Groundwater Hydrology) at Flinders University in 2017. Her Masters thesis ("Investigating methods to estimate the extent of fresh groundwater beneath the sea") led her to win the 2017 Ian Laing Prize of the Hydrological Society of South Australia. After her Masters, Cristina completed her PhD at Flinders University, titled "Tidal propagation and variable density processes in coastal aquifers". Cristina is a passionate about surface- and groundwater modelling, specifically interested in coupled density-driven flow and solute transport models. Cristina is a lecturer of hydraulics and water engineering for MSc and BSc civil engineering students at Flinders University.