S3 Ep5 Ehab Meselhe, PhD, PE, on the Louisiana Watershed Initiative

Dr. Ehab Meselhe is a Professional Engineer and Professor in the Department of River-Coastal Science and Engineering at Tulane University. Born in Egypt, in a small town at the tip of the Nile Delta, he spent the first part of his career studying the Nile basin. Ehab left Egypt to study Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Iowa, there earning his master’s and PhD.

It was the University of Louisiana at Lafayette that brought Ehab to Louisiana, where he was a professor in the Department of Civil Engineering for 15 years. 

One of Louisiana’s leading experts on coastal systems, Dr. Meselhe has nearly 30 years of experience researching coastal wetland hydrology, sediment transport, and computer modeling of coastal wetland systems. Ehab holds particular interest in the integration of physical, ecological, and social processes for inland watersheds’ riverine, deltaic, and coastal systems.  

Serving as Louisiana’s technical lead for the 2013 Mississippi River Hydrodynamic and Delta Management Study, Ehab’s work in predictive modeling has also contributed heavily to Louisiana’s $50 billion 2017 Coastal Master Plan. 

Ehab has worked as an educator, researcher, and practitioner with extensive experience working with academic institutions, government agencies, and the private sector. Ehab strongly believes that the next generation of scientists and engineers need to be taught to collaborate and seek public input in order to develop solutions for large-scale issues related to local and global coastal land loss.