Heidi Nepf

Heidi Nepf is the Donald and Martha Harleman Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. Her research focuses on fluvial and coastal hydrodynamic processes, particularly how vegetation influences currents, waves, sediment transport, and ecosystem function. She studies the interactions between flow and aquatic vegetation, including seagrasses, salt marshes, and mangroves, to understand their roles in coastal protection, nutrient and pollutant mitigation, and blue carbon storage. Her work aims to improve natural resource management and green infrastructure design.

Heidi Nepf is a researcher in fluid mechanics, focusing on the interaction between flow, transport, and aquatic vegetation. Her work explores the hydrodynamics of vegetated channels, including drag, turbulence, and diffusion in flow through emergent vegetation. She investigates the structure of shear layers, coherent structures, and mixing layers in vegetated aquatic flows. Her research also addresses the effects of submerged vegetation on flow and transport, including dispersion, retention time, and deposition mechanisms. Nepf's studies cover both rigid and flexible aquatic vegetation, examining how vegetation influences flow patterns and transport processes in natural and engineered systems.