Draft:Johan Gaume

Johan Gaume (born 18 September 1985) is associate professor of alpine mass movements at ETH Zürich and at the WSL Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research SLF in Davos, Switzerland.

Biography
Johan Gaume obtained his mechanical engineering and Master's degrees in 2008 from the Grenoble Institute of Technology. His MSc thesis focused on investigating the local and nonlocal rheological behavior of dense granular flows using the Discrete Element Method. He received a Ph.D. from Grenoble Alpes University in 2013 with a thesis entitled „Evaluation of avalanche release depths. Combined statistical – mechanical modeling”. He was then a postdoctoral researcher at WSL/SLF in Davos. In 2016, he joined EPFL as a Research and Teaching Associate with extensive visits to UCLA and UPenn. From 2019 to 2022, Gaume was an Assistant Professor at EPFL and head of the Snow and Avalanche Simulation Laboratory. Since 2022, he is Associate Professor of Alpine Mass Movements at ETH Zürich, a position which is jointly affiliated with the WSL Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research SLF in Davos, Switzerland where most of his group is located. Johan Gaume was also a semi-professional snowboarder specialized in Big Air and Slopestyle.

Research
His research interest is in the initiation and propagation of gravitational mass movements with a particular focus on snow and avalanche mechanics, including the development of multiscale methods based on computational geomechanics validated using laboratory and field experiments. In 2018, he proposed a new approach based on a novel snow constitutive law and a numerical technique known as the Material Point Method to simulate both the release and flow at the slope scale. This model later allowed him and his group to discover a transition from sub-Rayleigh anticrack to supershear crack propagation during the release process of snow avalanches. His work on snow avalanches was extended to model glacier calving and tsunamis as well as multiphase alpine mass movements. He is also known for proposing, together with his colleague Alexander Puzrin a plausible explanation to the Dyatlov Pass Incident, a famous Russian Cold case. His work improves the physical understanding of slope instability and mass flows with impacts on applied research related to risk assessment and management in mountainous regions.

Teaching and Outreach
Johan Gaume is involved in the class „Physics and Hydrology of Snow” (EPFL Master course) and teaches the course  „Granular mechanics” at ETH Zürich (Fall semester). He is involved every year in outreach activities: he gives lectures and organizes practical workshops during the international avalanche education events. Gaume is a member of the Science Alliance of Protect Our Winters Switzerland.

Awards
Johan Gaume has received the Swiss Government Excellence Scholarship (SEFRI) and was awarded the SNSF Ambizione grant and Eccellenza Professorial fellowship. In 2023 he was a recipient of the IUGG Early Career Scientist Award.