
Zbigniew J. Kabala
Research Area(s): Water, Resources and Treatment
Environmental Engineering
Environmental Impacts
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.
Contact via
zbigniew.kabala@duke.edu
Visit via
or 127C Hudson Eng Ctr
(office location)
TEACHING (Fall 2008)
CE 122L.001, FLUID MECHANICS, MWF 11:55 AM-12:45 PMCE 122L.01L, FLUID MECHANICS, Th 04:25 PM-05:40 PM
CE 122L.02L, FLUID MECHANICS, Th 02:50 PM-04:05 PM
CE 202.01, APPL MATH FOR ENGINEERS, MW 02:50 PM-04:05 PM
Recent Publications (More Publications)
- Kabala Z.J., El-Sayegh H.K., Transient flowmeter test: Simi-analytic crossflow model, Advances in Water Resources, vol. 25 no. 1 (2002), ppt. 103 - 121 , [S0309-1708(01)00013-6] [abs]
- Kabala, Z.J., Sensitiviby analysis of a pumping test on a well with wellbore storage and skin, Advances in Water Resources, vol. 24 no. 5 (2001), ppt. 483 - 504 , [S0309-1708(00)00051-8] [abs]
- Sutton, D.J. and Kabala, Z.J. and Francisco, A. and Vasudevan, D., Limitations and potential of commercially available rhodamine WT as a groundwater tracer, Water Resources Research, vol. 37 no. 6 (2001), ppt. 1641 - 1656 , [2000WR900295] [abs]
- Sutton, D.J. and Kabala, Z.J. and Vasudevan, D., Rhodamine WT as a reactive tracer: laboratory study and field consequences, IAHS Publication (International Association of Hydrological Sciences), no. 262 (2000), ppt. 201 - 205 [abs]
- Alapati, S. and Kabala, Z.J., Recovering the release history of a groundwater contaminant using a non-linear least-squares method, Hydrological Processes, vol. 14 no. 6 (2000), ppt. 1003 - 1016 , [(SICI)1099-1085(20000430)14:6<1003::AID-HYP981>3.0.CO;2-W] [abs]
Education:
- PhD, Princeton University, 1988
- MA, Princeton University, 1985
- MS, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznan, Poland, 1982
Research Interests:
- 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
- The Top 8 Most Downloaded Advances in Water Resources Article in 2001
- 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




