Gabriele Villarini, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering and associate faculty research engineer at IIHR--Hydroscience & Engineering, is recipient of the 2017 Water Young Investigator Award.

Water is a monthly open access journal on water science and technology, including the ecology and management of water resources.

The publication noted that "Villarini’s  work  has been instrumental in changing the way the scientific
community uses and validates remote sensing products. He has introduced useful concepts and applications of scaling properties of hydrological fields and examined many aspects of time series of floods and extreme rainfall.