Originally published in our November 2025 newsletter (Issue 28)
Dr. Stefano Galelli is a computational scientist working on the interaction between critical infrastructure systems and the natural environment. As a member of the MSD Community of Practice, he co-leads the Working Group on “AI for MSD Research”
Dr. Galelli is an Associate Professor in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Cornell University, where he leads the Critical Infrastructure Systems (CIS) Lab. His career has spanned Europe, Asia, and North America. A graduate of Politecnico di Milano, Italy, he first established his career overseas in Singapore, where he worked as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the National University of Singapore and as a faculty member at the Singapore University of Technology and Design. After more than a decade in Asia, Dr. Galelli’s career brought him to North America. His research is currently supported by the NSF, DOE, USGS, Schmidt Sciences, and the World Bank.
Dr. Galelli’s work examines the co-evolution of river basins and interconnected infrastructure systems, identifies emerging vulnerabilities, and provides robust solutions that balance resilience and sustainability. One major research direction is the development of computational models
of human behavior and their integration into large-scale hydrologic models [1]. Recently, the CIS Lab released a dataset covering 1985–2023 monthly-to-weekly time series of reservoir storage for all large dams in mainland Southeast Asia. By synthesizing these data, it developed the first open-source hydrologic–water management model describing the impact of dam operations in the Mekong River Basin [2].
His second research theme is the development of computational frameworks that enable domain-specific models (e.g., water, energy) to interoperate through cosimulation, namely the composition of individual models to enable the global simulation of interconnected systems. This allows us to understand how dynamic interconnections shape systems’ response and vulnerabilities. In the Greater Mekong Subregion, for example, Dr. Galelli and his team demonstrated that the joint operation of the hydropower network and power grid enables the restoration of environmental flows to downstream wetlands, a global biodiversity hotspot [3]. The main challenge ahead lies in scaling these data, models, and frameworks to the continental and global scales. Learn more about Dr. Galelli’s CIS Lab on his website or connect with him on X.
Highlighted Articles:
[1] Galelli, S., Turner, S.W.D., Pokhrel, Y., Ng, J.Y., Castelletti, A., Bierkens, M., Pianosi, F., Biemans, H. (2025) Advancing the Representation of Human Actions in Large-Scale Hydrological Models: Challenges and Future Research Directions, Water Resources
Research, 61(7), e2024WR039486.
[2] Eldardiry, H., Mahto, S.S., Fatichi, S., Galelli, S. (2025) VIC-Res Mekong: An opensource hydrological-water management model for the Mekong River Basink, Environmental Modelling & Software, 193, 106603.
[3] Galelli, S., Dang, T.D., Ng, J.Y., Chowdhury, A.F.M.K., Arias, M.E. (2022) Opportunities to curb hydrological alterations via dam re-operation in the Mekong. Nature Sustainability, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-022-00971-z.