Jane Frankenberger is a Professor in Agricultural and Biological Engineering at Purdue University. She earned a B.A. in Physics from St. Olaf College, Northfield, Minnesota, an M.S. in Agricultural Engineering from the University of Minnesota, and a Ph.D. in Agricultural and Biological Engineering from Cornell University. Before joining the ABE Department in 1996, she spent eight years working in Africa, both in the Democratic Republic of Congo (formerly Zaire) and in Senegal. In 2002-2003, she worked at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) in Washington DC, focusing on TMDLs and the role of land grant university extension and research in the TMDL process

Jane is responsible for the Purdue Extension program in soil and water engineering and water management and currently serves as the Extension Water Quality Coordinator. She has led numerous water quality projects throughout Indiana, working with communities and public water supply systems both to develop source water protection strategies and to manage drinking water quality. She has written extension publications on watershed management and assessment, wellhead protection, drinking water testing and treatment, and land use impacts on water quality. Her research focuses on watershed management and TMDLs in agricultural watersheds, and water and nitrate flux to subsurface drainage tiles. She teaches a graduate-level course on spatial analysis, “Geographic Information Systems Applications.”

Agricultural drainage, watershed management, water quality