Silvia Barbetta received the M.S. degree in Environmental Engineering with excellence from the University of Perugia, Italy, in 2001. Since 2001 she received a Scholarship and, successively, a Research Fellowship to carry research at the Research Institute of geo-Hydrological Protection (IRPI) of the National Research Council (CNR) of Perugia (Italy) under the project “Flood wave formation processes”. She has been a Researcher at CNR-IRPI in the period 2009-2022. Since January 2023, she is a Senior Researcher.

She serves as reviewer for different international journals (among them: Journal of Hydrology, Hydrological Sciences Journal, Journal of Hydrologic Engineering, Journal of Hydroinformatics, Water Resources Management, Remote Sensing, Water Resources Research, Hydrological Processes, Water) and has been co-author of more than 60 papers (journal and conference proceedings) and more than 50 scientific reports on the above topics. She has held more than 30 presentations at conference and workshops and she participated to more than 30 seminars held by Italian and foreign professors.

Moreover, she has actively participated in several research projects in the frame of Italian and European programs and in collaboration with Italian and international institutions.
She is member of the Italian Hydrological Society (SII), the Italian Group of Hydraulics (GII), the international Environmental Modelling and Software society (iEMSs) and the European Geophysical Union (EGU). She has been co-director of 7 Master Thesis and 4 PhD thesis.