Willy Bauwens is an emeritus professor of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), Brussels, Belgium and former head of the Department of Hydrology and Hydraulic Engineering of the Faculty of Engineering at the VUB (2010-2017).

His research expertise covers the fields of surface water hydrology and urban hydrology and, more specifically, the numerical modelling of water quantity and water quality.

In these domains, he has been teaching at the Engineering Faculty of the VUB and at the Brussels Faculty of Engineering (VUB and Université Libre de Bruxelles). He was also appointed as part-time lecturer at the University of Leuven, in the framework of the Interuniversity Programme in Water Resources Engineering (IUPWARE; 2001-2017) and at the University of Ghent, in the framework of the International Course Program “Physical Land Resources” (2004-2011).

He was in the chair of the Curriculum Council of the Master programs for Civil and Architectural Engineering of the VUB from 2008 till 2016. He also took care of the chair/vice chair of IUPWARE between 2004 and 2014.

He is co-author of more than 200 scientific papers, of which more than 75 are referred on the Web of Science.

His experience abroad includes the supervision of projects in the Palestinian Territories (1998-2007) and in the Nile Basin (FRIEND Nile, 2001-2009), as an expert for UNESCO and the Flemish Government. He also supervised a project in Ecuador in the framework of the University Development Aid of the Flemish Interuniversity Council (2008-2017). In Egypt, he coordinated an EU project in collaboration with the Water Resources Research Institute of Egypt (2007-2009). Further international activities took place in Peru, Vietnam and the Russian Federation.

He is a fellow member of the Royal Academy for Overseas Sciences (RAOS) since 2011.