faculty.Zbigniew Kabala

Zbigniew J. Kabala, Associate Professor

Dr. Zbigniew J. Kabala earned his master's degree in civil engineering (with specialization in environmental engineering) in 1980 from Poznan Polytechnic in Poznan, Poland, and another master's degree in mathematics in 1982 from A. Mickiewicz University in Poznan. After settling in the United States and a short sojourn at the Ohio State University, he entered Princeton University, where he earned a master's and Ph.D. degree in civil engineering and operations research in 1985 and 1988, respectively. Next, Dr. Kabala held one-year postdoctoral appointments at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the Ralph M. Parsons Laboratory and at the University of California-Berkeley in the Department of Soil Science. He was then appointed an assistant professor of hydrology in the Department of Soils and Environmental Sciences at the University of California-Riverside. He joined the Duke faculty in the summer of 1994.

Dr. Kabala's principal research interests cover stochastic and deterministic theory of fluid flow and contaminant transport in saturated and unsaturated heterogeneous porous media, theory of related measurements, field and laboratory studies in subsurface hydrogeology, stochastic fields and processes, numerical and analytical methods and sensitivity analysis. His current research focuses on developing new measurement techniques for characterization of porous media, recovering contaminant release histories from current plume observations, and stochastic modeling of water and solute transport in saturated and unsaturated heterogeneous formations (including cracking soils). Among his novel aquifer characterization techniques are the dipole-flow test (DFT), the dipole-flow test with a tracer (DFTT), and the transient flowmeter test (TFMT).

Dr. Kabala co-directs the Center for Multi-Scale Modeling and Distributed Computing at Duke. He is a member of an editorial board for Journal of Stochastic Environmental Research & Risk Assessment, the North Carolina Water Resources Research Institute's Technical Committee, and a number of professional organizations, including American Geophysical Union and American Society of Civil Engineers.

Education

• Ph.D. Civil Engineering and Operations Research, Princeton University, 1988
• M.A. Civil Engineering and Operations Research, Princeton University, 1985
• M.S. Mathematics, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznan, Poland, 1982
• M.S. Environmental Engineering, Poznan Polytechnic, Poznan, Poland, 1980

Professional Experience

• Associate Professor, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Duke University (1994-present)
• Associate Professor (secondary appointment), Nicholas School of the Environment, Duke University (1998-present)
• Assistant Professor Department of Soil & Environmental Sciences, University of California-Riverside (1990-1994)

Sample Publications [complete publication list]

Kabala, Z.J., and H.K. El-Sayegh 2002, Transient flowmeter test: semi-analytic crossflow model, Advances in Water Resources, 25(1), 103-121.

El-Sayegh, H.K., Z.J. Kabala, and Y.W. Kirn 2001, Review of the transient flowmeter test models, Hydrological Science & Technology, 17(1-4), 129-144.

Sutton, D.J., Z.J. Kabala, D. Vasudevan, and A. Francisco 2001, Limitations and potential of commercially available rhodamine WT as a groundwater tracer, Water Resources Research, 37(6), 1641-1656.

Kabala, Z.J. 2001, Corrigendum to "Sensitivity analysis of a pumping test on a well with wellbore storage and skin" by Z.J. Kabala [Advances in Water Resources, 24(5) (2001), 483-504], Advances in Water Resources, 24(7), 821.

Kabala, Z.J. 2001, Sensitivity analysis of a pumping test on a well with wellbore storage and skin, Advances in Water Resources, 24(5), 483-504.

Courses Taught

• CE 122L. Fluid Mechanics
• CE 123L. Water Resources Engineering
• CE 243. Physicochemical Unit Operations in Water Treatment
• CE 260. Vadose Zone Hydrology
• CE 261. Stochastic Subsurface Hydrology
• CE 262. Analytical Models of Subsurface Hydrology
• CE 264. Physico-Bio-Chemical Transformations

Honors and Awards

• The Top 8 Most Downloaded Advances in Water Resources Article in 2001

Professional and Service Activities

• Registered Professional Engineer in North Carolina
• Member, American Geophysical Union
• Member, American Society of Civil Engineers
• Member, National Groundwater Water Association
• Member, International Association of Hydrologists
• Member, International Association of Hydrological Sciences
• Member, American Society for Engineering Education

Current and Ongoing Research

• Deterministic and stochastic theory of flow and contaminant transport in saturated and unsaturated heterogeneous porous media
• Design and testing of new methods and devices for measuring of physical and chemical porous media properties
  • dipole-flow test
  • transient flowmeter test
  • dipole-flow test with a tracer
• Recovery of contaminant release histories from present plume distributions (ill-posed problem)
• Analytical methods, numerical methods, and sensitivity analysis for general problems in applied mathematics
• Bioremediation: modeling the role of bacterial and chemical transport