Dr. A. Ramachandra Rao, Professor Emeritus of Hydraulic and Hydrologic Engineering, received the Ven Te Chow Award from the Environmental and Water Resources Institute of the American Society of Civil Engineers. The award ceremony took place at the “World Environmental & Water Resources Congress” in Albuquerque, New Mexico, on May 23. Dr. Rao lectured on “Testing for Trends in Indian Rainfall Data” The award was particularly significant as Professor Ven Te Chow (after whom the award is named) was Dr. Rao’s advisor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The Award was given “for pioneering work in statistical and physical hydrology, for providing direction and stimulation to numerous undergraduate and graduate students, for inspiring others and for his unrelenting service to the profession.”

Established in 1995, the Ven Te Chow Award recognizes individuals whose lifetime achievements in the field of hydrologic engineering have been distinguished by exceptional achievement and significant contributions to research, education or practice. Dr. Rao received his BSCE degree at the University of Mysore in Bangalore, India, in 1960. After working for 2 years at the B.M.S. College of the University of Mysore, he obtained his MSCE degree at the University of Minnesota under the direction of Dr. Alvin G. Anderson. In 1968 he received his Ph.D. from the University of Illinois as a student of Prof. Ven Te Chow. Dr. Rao then joined Purdue University as a Visiting Assistant Professor and progressed through the ranks of Assistant Professor, Associate Professor and Professor.  He retired from Purdue in 2006 as Professor Emeritus. Professor Rao served as major professor for more than 20 doctoral students and over 25 master students. He has edited or co-authored six books, several developed with some of his graduate students. One book has to do with flood frequency analysis, another with regionalization of watersheds and the most recent one is on the Hilbert-Huang transform analysis of hydrological and environmental time series. His books have the potential of making advanced statistical hydrology techniques useful to both researchers and practicing hydrologists. He published more than 100 journal papers, over 200 conference papers and about 150 technical reports in the field of stochastic hydrology, urban hydrology and hydraulics. Dr. Rao was the faculty advisor of the Purdue Chapter of Chi-Epsilon for nearly two decades.