Fred Chaaya

Fred is a Senior Project Engineer at the Water Research Laboratory. He completed a double degree in Civil and Environmental Engineering at UNSW, with a focus towards aspects of water engineering including hydraulics and coastal engineering. As part of his studies, he completed an Honours thesis investigating techniques for forecasting coastal flood and erosion hazards.

Fred has become a proficient physical modeller, developing a sound understanding of complex hydraulic processes through laboratory testing of dam spillways, cruise ship prop-wash and coastal flume modelling. He is adept in a wide range of instrumentation and modelling skills, as well as model design, construction and operation.

Fred’s practical skills and extemporaneous problem-solving have been an asset to several projects involving field investigations and monitoring instrumentation installations. Fred’s management of the globally renowned community science coastal monitoring program, CoastSnap, has led to the efficient and optimised administration of a large-scale, multi-client project. Fred has a high level of expertise in the reservoir management space, with a focus on mitigation of the negative impacts of reservoir stratification.