The lecturers in this series represent the best and brightest luminaries in hydrological science and engineering. Their selection for the Chester Kisiel Memorial Lecture series honors not only Chester Kisiel's service to the profession but also their own contributions to the field of hydrology and water resources. Please contact the department if you would like to sponsor a future Kisiel Lecture.
| Year | Lecturer | Affiliation | Title |
| 1982 | Nicholas C. Matalas | U.S. Geological Survey | Reflections on hydrology |
| 1983 | Myron B. Fiering | Harvard University | The real benefits from synthetic flows |
| 1984 | J.D. Bredehoeft | U.S. Geological Survey | Water management in the United States: A democratic process (who are the managers?) |
| 1985 | Peter S. Eagleson | Massachusetts Institute of Technology | The emergence of global-scale hydrology |
| 1986 | James C.I. Dooge | University College, Dublin | Scale Problems in Hydrology |
| 1987 | R. Allan Freeze | University of British Columbia | Groundwater contamination: Technical analysis and social decision making |
| 1988 | Charles W. Howe | University of Colorado | Efficiency gains from building equity into water development |
| 1989 | Donald R. Nielson | University of Colorado | A challenging frontier in hydrology - The vadose zone |
| 1990 | John A. Cherry | University of Waterloo (Emeritus) | Groundwater contamination: A field perspective |
| 1991 | Ignacio Rodriguez-Iturbe | University of Iowa and Massachusetts Institute of Technology | Reflections on the 3-dimensional structure of river basins: Its linkage with runoff production and minimum energy dissipation |
| 1992 | Werner Stumm | Swiss Federal Institute of Technology | Surface chemical theory and predicting the distribution of contaminants in the aquatic environment |
| 1993 | Vit Klemeš | National Hydrology Research Instiute of Environment (Environment Canada) and Water Resources Consultant, British Columbia | Water storage: Source of inspiration and desperation |
| 1994 | M. Gordon Wolman | Johns Hopkins University and Consortium for Conservation Medicine | Title unknown |
| 1995 | David R. Dawdy | Consulting Hydrologist | Hurst, scaling, and the meaning of hydrologist |
| 1996 | Helen Ingram | University of Arizona (formerly), University of California at Irvine (present) | The role of science in water policy |
| 1997 | Stephen J. Burges | University of Washington | Managing water resources in variable climates - Examples from the U.S. and the southwest of Western Australia |
| 1998 | Ghislain de Marsily | University of Paris | Water in the next millenium: Where from, how much, how safe? |
| 1999 | András Szöllösu-Nagy | UNESCO, Director of the Division of Water Sciences, Secretary of the International Hydrological Programme, and Coordinator of UNESCO's environmental programmes (MAB, IOC, IGCP and MOST) | Title unavailable |
| 2000 | Stanley N. Davis | University of Arizona | Heroes of hydrology and their messages for today |
| 2001 | |||
| 2002 | Rafael Bras | Massachusetts Institute of Technology | Environment, water, and climate change |
| 2003 | George Pinder | University of Vermont | Beneath the surface of a civili action: The Woburn Trial revisited |
| 2004 | William Yeh | University of California at Los Angeles | Reservoir management and operation |
| 2005 | Lynn Gelhar | Massachusetts Institute of Technology | Field-scale reactive transport in heterogeneous aquifers |
| 2006 | |||
| 2007 | Edward Sudicky | University of Waterloo | Insights from coupled surface/subsurface hydrological simulations: From the scale of a rainfall-runoff experiment to tohe continental scale over an ice age |
| 2008 | Steven Gorelick | Stanford University | Water resources sustainability in developing nations: Two cases of supply dynamics and allocation |
| 2009 | Christopher Duffy | Pennsylvania State University | The shale hills hydro-sensorium for embedded sensors, simulation, and visualization: A prototype for land-vegetation-atmosphere interactions |
| 2010 | Grant Garven | Tufts University | The geohydrology of faults in southern California |
| 2011 | |||
| 2012 | Efi Foufoula-Georgiou | University of Minnesota at Minneapolis | New theories for modeling environmental extremes: From precipitation, to sediment, to tracer dispersal |
| 2013 | |||
| 2014 | Soroosh Sorooshian | University of California at Irvine | Challenges and limitations of hydroclimatological forecasting and the relative role of its three pillars: Models, observation, and parameterization |
| 2015 | Jesús Carrera Ramírez | Institute of Environmental Assessment and Water Research (IDÆA-CSIC), Barcelona, Spain | But dispersion has no clothes! |
| 2016 | C. Naomi Tague | Bren School of Environmental Science and Management, University of California at Santa Barbara | Ecohydrology and infomatics: Seeing the water in the trees |