Congratulations to Drs. Ashok Mishra, Kalyan Piratla and Brandon Ross on their promotions to Associate Professor! Along with their promotions effective August 15th, 2018, Dr. Kalyan Piratla has received the S. E. Liles, Jr. Distinguished Professorship, Dr. Brandon Ross the J. Richard and Nancy W. Cottingham Distinguished Professorship, and Dr. Ashok Mishra received the College of Engineering and Applied Science Dean Professorship.
Dr. Mishra’s research focuses on (a) to quantify water security with an emphasis on coupled climate-human interaction under multiple extreme climate events, and (b) to utilize hydroclimatic (extreme) information for improving infrastructure management. We use a combination of process based and statistical methods to quantify non-linear relationship that exists between climate-water- human systems to address water security in a changing environment. He teaches undergraduate and graduate courses related to water resources engineering.
Dr. Ross’ research activities are in the general area of structural engineering, with a specific emphasis on buildings and bridges that can be readily modified in response to ever-changing physical and functional demands. Our work is to create the technical knowledge that facilitates Learning Buildings and other Learning Structures, which are infused with the quality of adaptability and are made perpetually sustainable, resilient, and relevant.
Dr. Piratla’s group focuses on the development and validation of decision-making models for making underground infrastructure systems more sustainable and resilient. With primary focus on water supply systems, we are interested in developing better design, construction, and management alternatives for a sustainable future water supply. Our group also focuses on understanding and modeling the inter-dependencies among critical lifeline infrastructures in order to enhance their collective resilience against natural and anthropogenic hazards. Our research is partly inter-disciplinary in nature and we collaborate with experts in power systems engineering, wireless sensing systems, and graph theory. Potential direct beneficiaries of our research include water utilities, power utilities, underground construction contractors, underground consultants, emergency response teams, and other related government agencies.
