Dr. Ameet Pinto is an Environmental Engineer and Carlton S. Wilder Associate Professor in Civil and Environmental Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech). Ameet is a Chemical Engineer from the Institute of Chemical Technology (University of Mumbai) with post-graduate degrees in Environmental Engineering from the University of Alaska (2005) and Virginia Tech, USA (2009). Before joining Georgia Tech in 2021, he was an Assistant Professor at Northeastern University (2016-2021) and Lecturer/Senior Lecturer (2012-2015) at the University of Glasgow. Ameet’s research focuses on microbial ecosystems at the interface of infrastructure and public/environmental health with a focus on the engineered water cycle. The overall research goal is to characterize and manipulate microbial communities to (1) protect and improve public and environmental health and (2) improve functional reliability and economic feasibility of water infrastructure. To do this, his research group develops and applies state-of-the-art microbial molecular and sensing tools and modelling approaches to monitor and manage the microbiology of the engineered water cycle. Ameet also serves as the Editor for Water Research (the premier journal for the engineering, science, and technology for water quality management) and as the Secretary of the Microbial Ecology and Water Engineering (MEWE) Specialist Group of the International Water Association.

Muhanna is an associate professor in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology. He obtained his B.S. in Civil Engineering from the University of Damascus in 1972, and his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in the area of Solid and Structural Mechanics in 1976 and 1979, respectively from the Higher Institute for Structure and Architecture, Sofia, Bulgaria. He joined the faculty at the University of Damascus, Syria in 1980, and has also served on the faculty at Case Western Reserve University, Ohio and the University of Maryland (1991-2000). Muhanna has won a number of international prizes, among them: the Aga Khan Award for Architecture, one of the most prestigious international architectural awards, for the his masonry shell system without steel reinforcement (1992); the Golden Prize of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), for the best displayed patent at the International Fair of Damascus (1988); and the Special Prize of the United Nations HABITAT (1989). Muhanna's research activity is in the general area of solid and structural mechanics that includes uncertainty modeling, structural reliability, computational reliability, shell theory, and optimization of masonry building materials in structural systems. This research activity has culminated in the development of the new methods for reliable engineering computing, establishment of the Center for Reliable Engineering Computing (REC), and hosting the bi-annual international NSF sponsored workshop on Reliable Engineering Computing since 2004.

Dr. Jian Luo completed his undergraduate and M.S. studies at Tsinghua University, Beijing, where he received a B.Sc.(Eng.) and a M.S. degree in Environmental Engineering in 1998 and 2000, respectively. He completed his Ph.D. in 2006 in Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Stanford University, California. The research Dr. Luo is conducting involves field, theoretical, and computational investigations of flow and reactive transport in subsurface; development and application of geostatistical methods for the spatial and temporal analysis of hydrogeologic and biochemistry data; development of computational algorithms and programs to simulate subsurface flow and reactive transport, and to assess the associated uncertainty; inverse modeling to estimate flow and transport parameters under uncertainty; and use of such computational methods and models to assess subsurface contamination, and to aid the optimal design of groundwater remediation operations.

Dr. Aditya Kumar is an Assistant Professor in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Previously, he was a Postdoctoral Researcher in Aerospace Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He received his bachelor’s degree from the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, and his doctorate from Illinois.

Dr. Kumar’s main area of research is mechanics and physics of soft materials. Specifically, his research group develops mathematical theories and their computational implementation to study fundamental problems in materials like elastomers, adhesives, and biological tissues. Recent work includes the development of a fracture theory for elastomers that has been able to explain experimental observations that had puzzled scientists for decades. This work has also provided a unifying perspective on fracture in all brittle solids, soft or hard, and has led to an ongoing search for a complete theory of nucleation and propagation of fracture for all solids. Currently, his group is also working on the nonlinear mechanics of material evolution (remodeling) in biological tissues and the multi-physics modeling of 3D printing in polymers. 
 

Dr. Kostas Konstantinidis joined the Georgia Institute of Technology as an Assistant Professor in November 2007. He received his BS in Agriculture Sciences from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (Greece) in 1999. He continued his studies at the Center for Microbial Ecology at Michigan State University (East Lansing, MI) under the supervision of Prof. James M. Tiedje, where he obtained a PhD in 2004. His PhD studies were fully supported by the Bouyoukos Fellowship program and were devoted in advancing our understanding of the ecology and physiology of soil bacteria through the comparative analysis of their whole-genome sequences. This research resulted in a NSF-funded project to advance the species definition for prokaryotes, which also fostered a short post-doc position at the Center for Microbial Ecology. He then moved to MIT and the laboratory of Prof. Edward DeLong to get trained on innovating metagenomic techniques. His work at MIT provided important new insights into the complexity and function of oceanic microbial communities as well as how life is adapting in the deep and cold Oceans. His research interests are at the interface of genomics and computational biology in the context of microbial ecology with the overarching goal to broaden understanding of the genetic and metabolic potential of the microbial world. Advancing our knowledge on these issues is essential for a better understanding of the microbes that power, by and large, the biogeochemical cycles that sustain life on Earth and cause or control important diseases in humans and animals. He is a member of the American Society for Microbiology (ASM), the International Society for Microbial Ecology (ISME) and the Association of Environmental Engineering and Science Professors (AEESP). Konstantinidis held the Carlton S. Wilder Junior Professorship for five years and subsequently received the Maulding Faculty Fellowship in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering.

Ching-Hua Huang, Ph.D., is the Turnipseed Family Chair and Professor in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology. Huang received her Ph.D. and M.S. degrees in environmental engineering from Johns Hopkins University. Huang’s expertise includes environmental chemistry, advanced water/wastewater treatment technology, contaminants of emerging concern, sustainable water reuse, waste remediation and resource recovery. Huang has supervised many research projects sponsored by various agencies, and has published more than 170 peer-reviewed journal papers, book chapters and conference proceeding papers. She is the Associate Editor of the American Chemical Society's Environmental Science & Technology Water and the Editorial Advisory Board member of Environmental Science & Technology. 

James David Frost is the Elizabeth and Bill Higginbotham Professor of civil engineering. He received B.A.I and B.A. degrees in civil engineering and mathematics, respectively, from Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland in 1980 and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in civil engineering in 1986 and 1989 from Purdue University. Prior to serving as a member of the faculty at Purdue University and Georgia Tech, he worked in industry in Ireland and Canada on a range of natural resource related projects ranging from tailings impoundments to artificial sand islands in the Arctic for oil exploration. At Georgia Tech, where he has been for almost 20 years, he has served as head of the Geosystems Engineering Group and as founding director of the Georgia Tech Regional Engineering Program and subsequently the Georgia Tech Savannah campus.