Prince Sultan congratulated the winners and urged them to conduct more useful research works in water for the benefit of entire humanity.

Prince Khaled bin Sultan, assistant minister of defense and aviation for military affairs, chairman of the prize, attended the reception.

The Creativity Prize, which is worth SR1 million, is shared by two teams of researchers: The team of Marek Zreda (University of Arizona) and Darin Desilets (Sandia National Laboratory, USA) and the team of Ignacio Rodriguez-Iturbe (Princeton University, USA) and Andrea Rinaldo (École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausan, Switzerland).

Zreda and Desilets won the award for their groundbreaking work with the cosmic ray probe, a technology that uses cosmic-ray neutrons to measure soil moisture content and snow pack thickness over an area of tens of hectares.

Iturbe and Rinaldo were picked for the coveted prize for their invention and development of the new field of ecohydrology, which bridges the gap between the physical and life sciences.

Bart Van der Bruggen of the Katholieke Universiteit, Leuven received the Alternative (Non-traditional) Water Resources Prize worth SR500,000 for his work in the use of nanofiltration membrane technology for industrial water recycling.

Soroosh Sorooshian of the University of California, was the winner of the Water Resources Management and Protection Prize worth SR500,000 for his development and refinement of the “Persiann” model to estimate precipitation from satellite remotely sensed data.

Deputy Interior Minister Prince Ahmed distributed the prizes among the winners during a ceremony in Riyadh on Monday.