Soil Physics and Hydrology Division

Mentoring and social activities are generously supported by Gaylon and Judith Campbell Soil Physics Mentoring Program Fund

The Gaylon and Judith Campbell Soil Physics Mentoring Program Fund was established on November 11, 2019, through a generous donation by Campbell Scientific, Inc. and the Meter Group, Inc./Decagon Devices, Inc. The primary activities of the Fund will be to mentor student and early career members; to familiarize them with the functioning of the Soil Physics and Hydrology (SPH) Division within SSSA, and to provide guidance and feedback on their role as educators and researchers in the agricultural and environmental sciences for the betterment of society. 

This fund has been generously provided in the name of Emeritus Professor, Dr. Gaylon Campbell, and his wife, Judith Campbell. Dr. Campbell is an influential and inspiring faculty member and researcher from Washington State University and, later, the innovative founder of Meter Group Inc./Decagon Devices, Inc. We are extremely grateful for the Campbell family’s commitment to the SPH Division and SSSA. This gift enhances our mentoring and recognition activities for the next generation of soil scientists.

2022 Don and Betty Kirkham Award

Hans-Jörg Vogel | University of Halle
Hans-Jörg Vogel is head of the Department Soil System Science at the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research in Halle, Germany and professor for soil physics at the University of Halle. Prof. Vogel received his PhD from the University of Hohenheim and habilitated at the ETH in Zurich. His scientific career was always focused on the importance of soil structure on soil physical properties and how this can be modelled across scales. He developed and made available a number of valuable tools for structure analysis. Later, he expanded his field of research towards a better systemic understanding of soil processes and soil functions with special emphasize how this can be modelled by coupling physical and biological processes. He published 130 peer-reviewed publications and he regularly organized summer schools on water and solute transport in soils. He is leading the prominent project BonaRes Centre of Soil Research in Germany.

2022 Early Career Award

Salini Sasidharan  | Oregon State University 

Salini is an emerging young scientist in the critical areas of Environmental Science and Engineering, including groundwater quantity and quality management, sustainable irrigated agriculture, and resilient urban and rural water resources infrastructures. Her research focuses on various challenges of managed aquifer recharge including water quantity and quality, clogging, engineering designs of the infrastructure, numerical modeling, site selection, and regulatory standards.

2022 Robert Luxmoore Student Travel Awards

Tiantian Zhou | University of California-Riverside 
Tiantian Zhou works on modeling fate and transport of stable water isotopes at the University of California-Riverside. 

Chihiro Naruke Dixon | Utah State University
Chihiro Naruke Dixon studies soil hydraulic and thermal properties and their associations with root density and distribution at Utah State University

2022 Soil Physics and Hydrology Oral/Poster student competition winners

1st place - Chihiro Naruke Dixon, Utah State University

2nd place - Jin Ho Lee, Michigan State University

3rd place - Yulissa Perez Rojas, University of California