Carola Forlini is a PhD student in Coastal and Oceanographic Engineering under the mentorship of Dr. Alex Sheremet (University of Florida, ESSIE). Carola holds a Bachelor’s in Civil and Environmental Engineering, a Master’s in Civil Engineering with a focus in hydrology studies, both from University of Parma, in Italy, and a Master’s in Coastal and Oceanographic Engineering at UF.

As an ORISE Fellow participant (2020/2021) in the program “Modeling of Ship Waves and Induced Erosion/Scour Effects with Sediment Transport on Shorelines,” under the mentorship of Dr. Sheremet and Dr. Matt Malej (U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center), Carola’s research has focused on understanding the dynamics associated with ship waves and their effects on the environment, in particular sediment transport and erosion of the coastline. Furthermore, as part of her PhD research Carola is collecting and analyzing field data along the Florida Intracoastal Waterway for use in numerical modeling such as FUNWAVE-TVD to further understand the long term environmental impacts of the traffic generated by boats. Forlini and Sheremet deploy arrays of instruments such as the Acoustic Doppler Velocimeters (pictured below) to quantify boat traffic and its environmental impacts.