The 7th International Conference on HydroScience and Engineering took place on September 11-13 in the Bossone Research Enterprise Center, hosting experts in the field of HydroScience from around the world. The ICHE2006 event was organized by a local committee chaired by Associate Professor Michael Piasecki from the Department of Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering with help from colleagues in the CAEE department, Princeton University, University of Maryland, and Villanova University. The theme of the conference was: IT in the field of HydroSciences, to reflect the growing influence IT has on today’s engineering and science fields, particularly those related water. The conference featured several mini-symposia embedded in the program with specific emphasis on IT topics in HydroSciences, like Hind-and Forecast Systems, High Performance Computing for Turbulence Modeling, Metadata and Ontologies, and also hosted the yearly meeting of the metadata workgroup of the International Oceanographic Data and Information Exchange organization.

The biennial event, being back on US soil for the first time since its inauguration in 1993, was a great success with 264 registered participants presenting 256 papers in 54 parallel sessions during the course of the three days. The international character of this event was evident as manifested by an almost even three-way split of delegates coming from Asia, Europe, and the North American Continent, plus individuals from Australia, South America, and Africa.