Tian Zhao
Postdoctoral Fellow
Education & Affiliations
Areas of Expertise
Biography
Dr. Tian Zhao is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of River-Coastal Science and Engineering at Tulane University since August 2025. He obtained his Ph.D. from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he designed and conducted flume and numerical experiments to study how turbulence and bedload sediment transport are impacted by vegetation morphology (e.g., stem diameter, clustering, submergence, and flexibility). At Tulane, as a team member of MissDelta (Mississippi River Delta Transition Initiative), he combines shipboard, ground, and LiDAR observations to parameterize vegetation and floc dynamics for delta-scale ecomorphodynamic numerical models.
Research
Turbulent flows
Sediment transport
Ecohydraulics
Ecomorphodynamics
Environmental fluid mechanics
River and coastal protection and restoration
Contributions
Selected Publications
Zhao, T., & Nepf, H. (2024). Turbulence and bedload transport in submerged vegetation canopies. Water Resources Research, 60, e2024WR037694.
Zhao, T., & Nepf, H. M. (2021). Turbulence dictates bedload transport in vegetated channels without dependence on stem diameter and arrangement. Geophysical Research Letters, 48, e2021GL095316.
Shan, Y., Zhao, T., Liu, C., & Nepf, H. (2020). Turbulence and bed load transport in channels with randomly distributed emergent patches of model vegetation. Geophysical Research Letters, 47, e2020GL087055.
Selected Awards and Recognitions
2023 MathWorks Fellowship, MIT
2023 Maseeh Annual Award for Excellence as a Teaching Assistant, MIT Civil and Environmental Engineering
2022 Teaching Development Fellowship, MIT
2018 Linde (1962) Presidential Fellowship, MIT
2017 Outstanding Graduate, Nanjing University
