HR Wallingford: Visiting Professorship for Andrew Manning (UK)

Andrew Manning has been appointed a Visiting Professor specialising in Sediment Dynamical Processes by the University of Hull. Andy, a Principal Scientist at HR Wallingford in the Coasts and Estuaries Group, is a marine scientist specialising in sediment transport within coastal, estuarial and fluvial locations.

Andy is also a Lecturer in Coastal and Shelf Physical Oceanography at Plymouth University. He has strong links with numerous research institutes, laboratories and universities in the USA such as: the US Geological Survey; University of Florida – Gainesville; and University of California – Davis. Andy also has strong research links around Europe, all through HR Wallingford’s involvement in a series of governmental, research council, industrial, and HR Wallingford company research funded projects. Andy enjoys the challenge of applying the ever-growing body of knowledge about sediment transport, in particular flocculation, depositional and erosion processes.

Andy’s research interests include: mud flocculation dynamics, modelling and parameterising cohesive sediment mass settling fluxes, mixed sediment transport processes, oceanographic instrument development, estuarine morphology, and hydrodynamical mixing processes. Andy is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and was awarded a Plymouth University Vice Chancellor’s Research Fellowship in 2007. To date he has been a contributing author to more than 85 peer reviewed articles, two thirds of which have been published in international books and journals. He has led numerous research projects investigating sediment transport in a wide range of aquatic environments around the world.

The Visiting Professorship at Hull University will link HR Wallingford and the highly rated Department of Geography, Environment and Earth Sciences (GEES) in the Faculty of Science & Engineering at the University of Hull, where 90% of their research output was rated as being of an international standard (RAE 2008). Andy is actively collaborating with Professor Daniel R. Parsons, Professor of Process Sedimentology in GEES at University of Hull on a number of multidisciplinary research projects. Their collaborations include the NERC funded COHBED (Realistic Sedimentary Bedform Processes: incorporating cohesive forces) project and a project from HR Wallingford’s Company Research Programme ‘ADCP Sediment Profiling’. The latter project has the goal of quantifying the response of acoustic Doppler current meters (ADCPs) to measure resuspended cohesive and mixed sediment floc properties.

Andy has been asked to actively contribute his research expertise on cohesive and mixed sediment transport processes and parameterisation, in particular Andy’s research on flocculation, to the Department’s already strong research capabilities which include: earth surface processes, hydrodynamics, and sedimentological processes.

Parsons explains: “The process of flocculation – where sticky small grains essentially bind together to make larger ones, result in the larger particles exhibiting higher settling velocities and density characteristics from their component particles – this is known to be very important with regards to how both muds and sands interact whilst they move through our estuaries and around the UK coast – but we know very little about where and when this happens. I’m looking forward to continuing to work with Andy and his colleagues at HR Wallingford on collaborative novel marine science over the coming years. There is a lot to do but together we can make a major advance in our understanding.”

HR Wallingford hopes to benefit by gaining an early insight into leading-edge research and having some influence on its content. The link will also assist in the broader cross-fertilisation of approaches and ideas between industry and academia.”

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Press Release, July 15, 2013