Sara Bonetti is a civil engineer and ecohydrologist and a Tenure Track Assistant Professor at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), where she leads the Laboratory of Catchment Hydrology and Geomorphology (CHANGE). She earned her Bachelor's and Master's degrees in Civil Engineering from the University of Padova, Italy, and completed her PhD in Civil and Environmental Engineering at Duke University, USA. Her international academic career has included research appointments at Princeton University, ETH Zürich, University College London, and a faculty position at Wageningen University before joining EPFL.
Her research lies at the interface of hydrology, geomorphology, soil science, and ecology, with the goal of understanding how interactions among water, soil, vegetation, and sediments shape terrestrial ecosystems across scales. By combining process-based understanding with quantitative modeling, her work seeks to improve our understanding of landscape and ecosystem responses to environmental change, contributing to more sustainable land and water management under increasing anthropogenic pressures and climate change. Her current research focuses on agricultural sustainability from plot to global scales, soil carbon dynamics in complex landscapes, and the integration of process-based and data-driven approaches in ecohydrology.
She further contributes to the advancement of the field through editorial roles, the organization of scientific meetings, and service to the research community, including as a member of the Swiss Hydrological Commission.