Professor Venkataraman “Venkat” Lakshmi, one of the Department of Engineering Systems and Environment's newest faculty members, has been elected to serve as chair of the University of Virginia School of Engineering Faculty Council.
The council is composed of UVA Engineering faculty members who serve on the University Faculty Senate. Members are elected by secret ballot, and the council selects a chair from among its membership each year. Lakshmi will take over from Peter D. Norton, associate professor of science, technology and society, who was chair from 2012 to 2014 and from 2017 to 2019. Norton continues to serve on the council, as he has since 2011.
The council advocates for the interests and values of all UVA Engineering faculty members and is charged with advising deans and department chairs on the faculty members' behalf. Its responsibilities include consulting with and advising the dean on matters concerning the School, such as long-range planning; liaising with the administration; and providing counsel in the appointment of associate and assistant deans.
Lakshmi, who earned his Ph.D. in civil and environmental engineering from Princeton University in 1996, began his career as a research scientist at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. He has held a number of appointments, including two sabbaticals at Stanford University as Cox Visiting Professor in 2006-2007 and 2015-2016. From 1999 to 2018, he served on the faculty of the Department of Earth and Ocean Sciences at the University of South Carolina, including a three-year term as department chair from 2008 to 2011. He directed the National Science Foundation Hydrologic Sciences Program from July 2017 to December 2018.
Professor Lakshmi's areas of research interest include catchment hydrology, satellite data validation and assimilation, field experiments, land-atmosphere interactions, satellite data downscaling, the vadose zone — the area that extends from Earth's ground surface to the water table — and water resources. He specializes in using data collected from space to make observations about the terrestrial water cycle to better understand weather, climate and ecological systems.