Challenges in Environmental Science and Engineering, 
CESE-2010 

26 September to 01 October, 2010

The Sebel, Cairns, Australia

Professor Poojitha Yapa

Professor Yapa, a Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Clarkson University, Potsdam, NY has B.Sc in Civil Engineering and M.Sc in Hydraulic engineering. He received his Ph.D. in Civil and Environmental Engineering from Clarkson University in 1983. His research has focused on “environmental hydraulics problems”. For the last 25 years his research has been focused on oil spill modeling. This includes not only trajectory modeling, but modeling physico-chemical processes oil undergo when spilled in the ocean or rivers. In the last 15 years his modeling has been on deepwater oil, gas, and hydrates, studying the complex processes they undergo during the travel from deepwater to the surface. Prof. Yapa and his students developed a computer model (CDOG) for modeling the behavior of oil and gas when released in deepwater. The work has been published in leading journals.

Prof. Yapa received prestigious Erskine fellowship from New Zealand and Gledden Fellowship from Australia for long term visits to their Universities. He has also been invited to Universities in Japan. He has given nearly 50 invited seminars in 8 countries. He has numerous publications in leading Hydraulic Engineering and research journals and has been the associate editor of hydraulic journals of American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) as well as the International Association of Hydraulic Research (IAHR). Prof. Yapa chaired the Task Committee on Modeling of Oil Spills formed by the ASCE. He was a member of the advisory committee to NOAA on GNOME Model. At present he is a member of Task Committee on Best Practices in Oil Spill Modeling, CRRC/NOAA. During the on-going Gulf of Mexico oil spill Prof. Yapa was invited by The US government to be an adviser to NOAA on Deepwater plumes as well as a member of the Flow Rate Task Group that calculates the oil discharge rate.