Venkataraman Lakshmi
About
Venkat graduated from University of Roorkee in 1987 with a Bachelor degree in Civil Engineering and a Doctorate in Civil and Environmental Engineering in 1996 from Princeton. He worked at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center 1996-1999 as a research scientist in the Laboratory for the Atmospheres.
His areas of research interest are catchment hydrology, satellite data validation and assimilation, field experiments, land-atmosphere interactions, satellite data downscaling, vadose zone and water resources.
He is currently the John L Newcomb Professor of Engineering in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Virginia. He has served as Cox Visiting Professor at Stanford University 2006-2007 and 2015-2016 and Program Director for Hydrologic Sciences at the National Science Foundation (2017-2018).
Venkat is a fellow of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), Geological Society of America (GSA), American Society of Agronomy (ASA), American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), and he has over 200 peer-reviewed articles and around 600 presentations and thesis supervisor for 25 graduate students. He is currently serving as editor for Vadose Zone Journal and the founding editor-in-chief of Remote Sensing in Earth System Science (Springer Journals). He has served on the National Academies Panel for the Decadal Survey of Earth Observations from Space (NASA) and as chair of the planning committee for Groundwater Recharge and Flow: Approaches and Challenges for Monitoring and Modeling Using Remotely Sensed Data (NGA). He is currently serving as a member of the Water Science and Technology Board, National Academy of Sciences and Vice-Chair of the Earth Science Advisory Committee for NASA. He is the President of the Hydrology Section of the American Geophysical Union (https://connect.agu.org/hydrology/home)
Education
B.E Civil Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee 1987
M.S. Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Iowa, 1989
PhD Civil and Environmental Engineering, Princeton University, 1995
Research Interests
Awards
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Venkat Lakshmi Elected Fellow of AAAS for Contributions in the Hydrology Field
Read NowProfessor of civil and environmental engineering has made science-based service a cornerstone of his career.
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Three UVA Engineering Faculty Elected as AAAS Fellows
Read NowUVA Engineering’s new fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science represent three different departments and distinct areas of research.
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Wet Years Followed by Drought Turned California’s Flora Into Tinder
Read NowUVA Engineering hydrology experts say two years of plentiful rain contributed to the devastating fires in California.