Zbigniew J. Kabala

Born and raised behind the Iron Curtain, Dr. Zbigniew J. Kabala is a naturalized United States citizen who cherishes the freedoms and opportunities granted by this country. He earned his master's degree in civil engineering in 1980 from Poznan Polytechnic in Poznan, Poland, and master's degree in mathematics in 1982 from A. Mickiewicz University in Poznan. At Princeton University, he earned another master's and Ph.D. degrees in civil engineering and operations research in 1985 and 1988, respectively. Next, Dr. Kabala held one-year postdoctoral appointments at the MIT in the Ralph M. Parsons Laboratory and at the UC-Berkeley in the Department of Soil Science. He was then appointed an assistant professor of hydrology in the Department of Soils and Environmental Sciences at the UC-Riverside. He joined the Duke faculty in the summer of 1994.

Dr. Kabala teaches currently the following courses: Fluid Mechanics, Advanced Fluid Mechanics, Groundwater Hydrology, and Computational Thinking and Programming with AI. He utilizes Mathematica (Wolfram Language), Python, and ChatGPT in his research and teaching. In addition, Dr. Kabala  offers online courses for Institute for Statistical and Data Science, also known as InStats for short (https://instats.org/). He enjoys his interactions with students in and outside of class. He has served as a faculty in residence (FIR) in Southgate, Giles, and West House dormitories for a number of years. Dr. Kabala has also worked with Pioneer Academics to mentor high school students from around the world and recruit some of them to Duke. He is an avid member of Toastmasters International, where he hones his public speaking skills and helps students and postdocs do the same.

Dr. Kabala follows politics with great passion and occasionally writes about it. In his free time, he enjoys racquet and water sports, hiking, reading, and listening to jazz.