Dr Jessica Bohorquez

Have you ever thought about how water reaches your shower every morning? There is a complete industry behind ensuring that water is available for everyone! Dr Jessica Bohorquez discovered her passion for this industry very early in her civil engineering studies, after changing her mindset around a “tedious” course that she ended up teaching years later.

Born in Colombia, Jessica came to Australia five years ago to complete a PhD in Civil Engineering at The University of Adelaide. Her research has focused on the development of new techniques for inspecting water pipelines to detect and locate leaks and bursts. She incorporated for the first time principles of pipeline inspection using hydraulic transient waves with machine learning resulting in multiple patents and publications.

During her time in Australia, Jessica has built the foundations of her career values around discipline, effective engineering and research communication and empathy. Jessica firmly believes in the importance of working together including professionals from STEM careers to tackle the water industry’s future challenges and trusts that her values will guide her in a complex and dynamic industry. She is currently an advisor at Inside Infrastructure (a Ricardo company) and a Postdoctoral researcher at the University of Adelaide.