Zhao Jianshi is a Tenured Professor and PhD supervisor in the Department of Hydraulic Engineering at Tsinghua University, and currently serves as Deputy Dean of the School of Civil Engineering. He received his Bachelor’s degree in Hydraulic and Hydropower Engineering from Tsinghua University in 1998, and his PhD in Hydrology and Water Resources from Tsinghua University in 2003. He has been teaching at Tsinghua University since 2003, serving successively as Lecturer, Associate Professor, and Tenured Associate Professor, and was promoted to Tenured Professor in 2020. During this period, he conducted visiting scholar and postdoctoral research at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign from 2009 to 2010. He served as Director of the Institute of Hydrology and Water Resources in the Department of Hydraulic Engineering at Tsinghua University from 2017 to 2020, and has been serving as Deputy Dean of the School of Civil Engineering since July 2020.

His research focuses on the evolution mechanisms of human–water coupled systems in river basins, theories and methods of water resource risk hedging and regulation, and integrated watershed management under changing environmental conditions. He has led more than thirty major research projects, including those under the National Key R&D Programme and key projects of the National Natural Science Foundation of China, and has produced a series of innovative achievements in adaptive management of water resources systems, transboundary river cooperation mechanisms, and optimal reservoir operation. He has published six academic monographs and more than 80 SCI papers in leading international journals such as Nature Water, Nature Communications, and Water Resources Research. He has received two Second Prizes of the National Science and Technology Progress Award and more than ten provincial- and ministerial-level awards, and was awarded the 14th China Youth Science and Technology Award in 2016. He currently serves as Executive Council Member of the China Committee of the International Water Resources Association, Vice Chair of the Water Resources Committee of the Chinese Hydraulic Engineering Society, and Associate Editor of the ASCE Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management.