Summary report 6th IAHR Young Professionals Congress

Dec 9, 2025

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3 - 5 December 2025 | Online

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The 6th edition of the IAHR YP Congress took place online between Wednesday 3 and Friday 5 of December, 2025.

During these three days, 136 posters were presented by young professionals from all over the world, and discussed together with experts and peers. Sessions were always well attended, with more than 120 attendees on average.

During the Congress two young researchers, the recent awards of the JFK Best Student Paper Competition, were involved and gave their keynote lectures. On the second day, Tapas Kumar Pradhan presented his study entitled “Horseshoe Vortex Characteristics Near Bed-Mounted Inclined Cylinders", while on Friday Katelyn Kirby discussed her research with the lecture entitled "A High-Resolution National Database of River Widths from Remote Sensing and Cloud-Based Image Processing". During these two keynote lectures not only the scientific part was discussed in detail, showcasing the level reached by the two young scholars, but also the benefit of attending events and initiative devoted to young professionals, to better shape the scientific and career profile of young fellow.

Over the three days, fourteen technical sessions address 15 IAHR themes, pointing out the interest of the young generation in all water-related topics, spanning from fluid mechanics to hydraulic structures and climate change adaptation, touching on transversal themes like water resources management. The sessions were chaired by experts coming from both IAHR Technical Committees and Congress Supporters, a mix of practitioners and scientists that not only mentored the young speakers, but also suggested new ways for collaborating to eventually increase the impact of the research conducted by young professional and the IAHR community as a whole.

Selected highlights of the Congress are:

The constant interactions between speakers and chairs, which resulted in both mentoring and discussion on possible future collaborations;
The international character of the Congress, with speakers, chairs and attendees coming from all over the world, which shown the potentiality of IAHR in connecting people worldwide
The mixed audience, which was composed of both young researchers and recognized experts, indicating the interest that seniors have in the studies performed by the younger colleagues, which might eventually result in future trans-generational collaborations

Looking at the numbers (170+ submitted abstract, 1300+ registrations), the YP Congress proved, for the sixth year in a row, to be a key part of IAHR online activities, as it reaches less developed countries and allow presenters to showcase their research in a relaxed and friendly manner.

Michael Nones and Yifan Yang, Chairs of the 6th edition of the IAHR Young Professionals Congress