James Craig

James R. Craig is an Associate Professor in the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department at the University of Waterloo.

Prof. Craig’s expertise is in numerical and analytical modelling of water resource systems, with a focus on surface water hydrology, regional-scale groundwater flow, and subsurface heat transfer/phase change simulation. His research program bridges the divide between the fundamental and practical, with the goal of developing more robust, accurate, and practical modelling approaches that will be used to guide water management, operations, and policy. The core of Prof. Craig’s research program, which advances the toolkit of hybrid analytical-numerical methods to address a diverse range of problems, complements his collaborative research and publications across a variety of fields, including discontinuous permafrost hydrology, carbon sequestration, geothermal loop design, infiltration theory, and oil sands remediation. Prof. Craig is the lead software developer of the open-source Raven Hydrological Modelling framework (Raven) [raven.uwaterloo.ca], which has been adopted by organizations across Canada for water resources assessment, reservoir inflow forecasting, and flood forecasting.

Prof. Craig has earned multiple awards for research, service, and teaching, including the Ontario Early Researcher Award in 2011, the Faculty of Engineering Distinguished Performance Award in 2012, the Sandford Fleming Foundation Teaching Excellence Award in 2014, and the UW Engineering Society Teaching Excellence Award in 2018.

• Groundwater modelling
• Permafrost Hydrology
• Hydrologic Modelling
• Hydrological Upscaling
• Analytical-Numerical Methods

Analytic Element Method, Groundwater Flow Modelling, Contaminant Transport Modelling

• 2005, Doctorate Civil, Structural, and Environmental Engineering, University at Buffalo, USA
• 1999, Bachelor's Civil Engineering, Bucknell University, USA

• 2011 Awarded by the Ontario Ministry of Research and Innovation to promising researchers in the first five years of their academic career.
• 2002 Don Rennie Memorial award for outstanding Presentation (Environmental Modeling)
• 2004 IGERT (Integrative Graduate Education and Research Training) Fellowship in the field of Geographic Information Science
• 2004 CSEE Chair's Recognition Award

• CIVE 781 - Principles of Hydrologic Modelling
  • Taught in 2019, 2021, 2022, 2024
• ENVE 279 - Energy and the Environment
  • Taught in 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2024
• ENVE 573 - Contaminant Transport
  • Taught in 2020

* Only courses taught in the past 5 years are displayed.

• Prof's chair in water modelling renewed for five years