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Professor Murugesu Sivapalan, born 19 April 1953 as a Sri Lankan Tamil, is a hydrologist internationally recognized in the filed of catchment hydrology. He is known for his research on hydrological predictions in changing environments, leadership of initiatives in ungauged basins and pioneering in socio-hydrology. He is currently Chester and Helen Siess Endowed Professor in Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Illinois.

Early life and family
Sivapalan was born on 19 April 1953. He was the son of Sangarapillai Murugesu and Umadevy from Karaveddy in northern Ceylon. He is married to Banumathy. They have two sons (Mayuran and Kavin).

Education
Sivapalan was educated at Hartley College. After school he joined the University of Ceylon, Peradeniya, graduating from its successor, the University of Sri Lanka Peradeniya campus in 1975 with a B.Sc. degree in civil engineering. He later received a M.Eng. in water resources engineering from the Asian Institute of Technology in 1977, and a M.A. (1983) and Ph.D. (1986) in civil engineering, with a major in hydrology from Princeton University.

Career path
Sivapalan worked briefly at the Faculty of Engineering, University of Sri Lanka Peradeniya campus as an instructor in civil engineering in 1975. He was graduate student/research associate at the Division of Water Resources Engineering, Asian Institute of Technology between 1975 and 1977. He then worked as a consulting civil engineer for Rocks & Stones in Ibadan, Nigeria between 1978 and 1981. He was a research associate at Princeton University's Department of Civil Engineering and Operations Research between 1986 and 1988. He then worked at the University of Western Australia's Centre for Water Research for 17 years, initially as a lecturer (1988) before being promoted to senior lecturer (1992), associate professor (1995) and professor (1999). He joined the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign in 2005, teaching undergraduate and post-graduate courses in watershed hydrology, engineering hydrology, stochastic hydrology and water resources engineering. He became Chester and Helen Siess Endowed Professor in Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Illinois in April 2015.

He was visiting professor at Vienna Technical University, Delft Technical University, University of Technology, Sydney and Tsinghua University. In 2007 Sivapalan was the Borland Lecturer at the AGU Hydrology Days at Colorado State University.

Community service
Sivapalan was founding chair of the International Association of Hydrological Sciences' Decade on Predictions in Ungauged Basins initiative. He has served on the editorial boards of several international journals and was executive editor of the European Geophysical Union’s Hydrology and Earth System Sciences journal.

Awards and achievements
Sivapalan has been well recognized for his research and leadership by various international organizations. Below is a selected list of his awards:
 * 2001, Member of Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering
 * 2001, Life member of the International Water Academy, Oslo, Norway
 * 2003, The Centenary Medal from Australia government "for service to Australian Society in Hydrology and Environmental Engineering"
 * 2003, Fellow of the American Geophysical Union
 * 2007, The Borland Lecturer at the AGU Hydrology Days at Colorado State University
 * 2010, The International Hydrology Prize from the International Associate of Hydrological Sciences
 * 2010, The Hydrological Sciences Award from the American Geophysical Union
 * 2011, The Robert E. Horton Medal from the American Geophysical Union
 * 2012, An honorary doctorate from Delft Technical University.
 * 2015, Chester and Helen Siess Endowed Professor in Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Illinois since April 2015
 * 2017, The Alfred Wegener Medal (2017) from the European Geosciences Union
 * 2018, Prince Sultan bin Abdulaziz International Prize (Creativity Prize) for Water together with Günter Blöschl (2018)