About

Dr Valentin Heller is currently an Associate Professor in Hydraulics in the Department of Civil Engineering at the University of Nottingham and a member of the Environmental Fluid Mechanics and Geoprocesses Research Group. Before moving to the University of Nottingham, he held one of the prestigious Imperial College London Research Fellowships, a Research Fellowship at the University of Southampton and a postdoctoral position at ETH Zurich. He received his PhD and MSc in Civil Engineering from ETH Zurich. Dr Heller is mainly active in Experimental and Computational Fluid Dynamics with applications into fluid-structure interactions from small to very large scale. The fluid is typically water and the structure a hydraulic structure such as a dam, wall, landslide or iceberg. His research team applies a wide range of measurement systems (Particle Image Velocimetry, laser distance sensors, load cells) and open source codes such as DualSPHysics, OpenFOAM, SWASH and LIGGGHTS-DEM.

Career Type:

Scientist/Researcher/Academic

Organization Type:

Universities and Academia

Expertise Fields/Interests:

Dr Heller is mainly active in Experimental and Computational Fluid Dynamics with applications into fluid-structure interactions from small to very large scale. The fluid is typically water and the structure a coastal or hydraulic structure such as a dam, wall, a landslide or iceberg. His research team applies a wide range of measurement systems (Particle Image Velocimetry, laser distance sensors, load cells) and open source codes such as DualSPHysics, OpenFOAM, SWASH and LIGGGHTS-DEM. Recent research applications in coastal and hydraulic engineering include wave-flexible-structure interaction (e.g. Attili et al. 2021), iceberg-tsunamis (e.g. Heller et al. 2019; Chen et al. 2020), novel scaling laws in air-water flows (e.g. Catucci et al. 2021), scale effects in granular slides (e.g. Kesseler et al. 2020) or the effect of the water body geometry and bathymetry on landslide-tsunamis (e.g. Ruffini et al. 2019; 2021).

Major Achievements:

Chair of the International Scientific Committee of the 11th International Symposium on Hydraulic Structures (ISHS), Chengdu, China, 29.06-02.07.2026. Editor of Distinction Award 2025 - Springer Nature Author Service Award - for work as Journal Editor of Landslides. "This award recognises your exceptional service in improving the author experience and ensuring the peer review process is efficient, constructive and fair." 17th Harold Jan Schoemaker Award from IAHR in 2013 for the review article "Scale effects in physical hydraulic engineering models".