Researcher biography

Vilim has BSc and MSc degrees in Agroecology with a major in Soil Science and a PhD in Environmental Soil Physics and Ecohydrology from the University of Zagreb, Croatia. After the completion of his PhD on the topic of nitrate transport modelling in soil (2012), he has undertaken a postdoctoral fellowship (INRAE, France) focusing on modelling the impact of agricultural practices at the field scale on water dynamics and pesticide transport with Professor Yves Coquet and Dr. Pierre Benoit. He took on the academic position at the University of Zagreb Faculty of Agriculture (Croatia) in 2016 as Assistant Professor and from 2022 as Associate Professor. He has been teaching Environmental soil science and hydrology courses and has supervised 21 MSc and 2 PhD students. In 2022 he took on a research position at Federation University in Australia in the Future Region Research Centre led by Professor Thomas Baumgartl focusing on mine rehabilitation issues. During his career, he has been a visiting scholar at CSIRO (Australia), SLU (Sweden), University of California, University of Florida, Penn State University (USA), BOKU (Austria), CEH (UK), ZALF (Germany), CZU (Czech Republic) and ILVO (Belgium).

Vilim has led various national and international projects focusing on agricultural and environmental issues in the soil-plant-atmosphere continuum. He was granted a bilateral project with CSIRO in 2019 and Starting grant project in 2020 with ZALF and Forschungszentrum Jülich. These grants were funded by the Croatian Science Foundation (equivalent to the ARC funding body).

Vilim is currently Associate Editor of the Soil Science Society of America Journal and Vadose Zone Journal and is actively involved in different international scientific groups focusing on vadose zone processes and numerical modelling. He was the recipient of the Soil Society of America Early Career Award for 2019 and selected as a Visiting Fellow in 2021 at the Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research ZALF Institute (with Dr Horst H. Gerke) in Germany.

Areas of research