Faculty Expertise Guide - College of Engineering - Virginia Tech

College of engineering faCulty expertise listing 2010-2012
agement
Applications: Behavior of rivers during floods; impact of human
activities on fish habitat; impact of dam-controlled rivers
on stream stability; movable bed model studies; sediment
and pollutant transport in surface waters; water and pollutant
movement through wetlands; soil erosion prediction and
prevention; hydraulic structures; scour around bridge piers
and abutments; unique experimental facilities available at the
Baker Environmental Hydraulics Laboratory
Expertise: Numerical and experimental modeling of fluvial phenomena;
gravel-bed stream dynamics; turbulent boundary layers
over rough surfaces; solid-liquid separation processes
Examples of Funding Sources: National Science Foundation,
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, U.S. Geological Survey,
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Office of Army Research,
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, Office of Naval
Research, NASA, Virginia Transportation Research Council,
Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries, Nature
Conservancy, Dominion Power, Pacific Gas and Electric
ENVIRONMENT AND FLUVIAL HYDRAULICS
Name: Erich T. Hester
Department: Civil and Environmental Engineering
Office Phone: 540-231-9758
FAX: 540-231-7532
E-mail: ehester@vt.edu
URL: http://filebox.vt.edu/users/ehester/website/index.html
Specialty: Hydrology, Hydraulics Ecology, Restoration of
Streams, Rivers, and Wetlands
Applications: Research relating physical characteristics of
streams human activities, and aquatic ecosystem health; preservation
of healthy streams, rivers, and wetlands; stream, river,
and wetland restoration design; watershed management; modeling
of water flow and pollutant transport in streams, rivers,
wetlands, and groundwater
Expertise: Interdisciplinary studies relating hydraulics and ecological
health (ecohydraulics) in streams, rivers, and wetlands;
modeling and measuring surface water-groundwater (hyporheic
exchange) in steams, rivers, and wetlands; heat and
pollution migration in streams, rivers, and wetlands; impacts
of pollution, climate change, and land use change on aquatic
ecosystems; improving stream, river, and wetland restoration
design and watershed planning
Examples of Funding Sources: U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency
ENVIRONMENT AND NANOTECHNOLOGY
Name: Peter Vikesland
Department: Civil and Environmental Engineering
Office Phone: 540-231-3568
FAX: 540-231-7916
E-mail: pvikes@vt.edu
URL: www.cee.vt.edu/people/pvikes.html
Specialty: Environmental Engineering, Environmental Nanotechnology
Applications: Research activities are aimed at development of
improved technologies to sense and remediate waterborne
environmental contaminants, optimize drinking water disinfection
practices, and understand corrosion processes in both
engineered and natural systems
Expertise: Development of engineered nanoparticles for use as
environmental sensors and for contaminated site remediation;
characterization of surface mediated reactions in both engineered
and natural systems; examination of disinfectant interactions
with oxidizable materials in drinking water
Examples of Funding Sources: American Water Works Association
Research Foundation, National Science Foundation, Vir-
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