Dieter Rickenmann is a senior research scientist at the Swiss Federal Research Institute WSL, Birmensdorf, Switzerland. He has a degree as Civil Engineer from ETH Zürich in Switzerland and a PhD degree from ETH Zürich. In 2002 he was appointed Professor for Alpine Natural Hazards at the University of Natural Resources and Applied Life Sciences (BOKU) in Vienna, Austria. Since 2007 he is back at the Swiss Federal Research Institute WSL, focusing mainly on sediment transport processes and debris flows in steep headwater catchments.