P. Suresh Rao

Purdue University
Lyles School of Civil and Construction Engineering
550 Stadium Mall Drive
West Lafayette, IN 47907-2051

Office:
Phone:
Email: SureshRao@purdue.edu

Education
University of Hawaii at Manoa, PhD (1974)
Colorado State University, MS (1970)
APA University, B.Sc. (1967)

Research Summary
Dr. Rao's inter-disciplinary research and graduate education programs in environmental and ecological sciences/engineering have covered diverse research interests that have spanned from lab-scale, process-level studies, and network/systems modeling.

Current research and educational interests are focused on: (1) landscape transitions under human impacts, including intensive food production and urbanization, (2) multi-scale modeling/analysis of hydrologic and biogeochemical responses of agricultural and urban catchments under natural and anthropogenic forcing; and (3) resilience analysis of coupled, complex (natural, engineered, social) systems, including inter- dependence of infrastructure networks and systems.

Past projects have involved development and use of models for research purposes and for decision making, with applications in catchment-scale water-quality analyses; aquifer-scale studies on industrial land uses & assessments; groundwater vulnerability, contaminated site remediation, and watershed management.

Selected Research Projects

• Resilience of inter-dependent urban infrastructure networks (water, transportation, electricity systems)
• Linking hydro-climatic forcing, bathymetry, hydrologic variability of wetlands and vegetation ecological adaptation
• Multi-scale catchment modeling of coupled hydrologic and biogeochemical processes in intensely managed landscapes and river networks

Selected Publications
Complete listing available on Google Scholar