Saurav Kumar

Saurav Kumar has dedicated his career to understanding water usage and the impacts of runoff and drought on the natural environment. It is that passion that has brought him to Arizona State University and the School of Sustainable Engineering and the Built Environment, one of the seven schools in the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering.

“My research focuses on acquiring data and putting it to good use for environmental and natural resource decision-making,” Kumar says. “The idea of applying new technologies and affecting minds is what keeps me going.”

Originally from New Delhi, India, Kumar made his way to ASU with stops along the way. At Virginia Tech he earned his doctoral degree in civil engineering and started his research career in water systems. He moved from Virginia to arid southwest Texas working first at the University of Texas at El Paso and then the Texas A&M AgriLife Research at El Paso. As an assistant professor at AgriLife Research and the department of Biological and Agricultural Engineering, he oversaw research on arid region water management and using innovative remote sensing tools such as aerial hyperspectral imaging for water resources and agricultural management.

“ASU, with its focus on water, convergence and innovation, offers a great opportunity to continue working on managing common pool water resources for arid regions by better understanding and discovering the connections between water, human and other natural or engineered systems,” says Kumar.

Kumar will teach numerical methods and computational tools for engineering, giving students exposure to methods that allow them to model outcomes that would be too large to replicate in real life.

“The Southwestern United States is dramatically changing due to drought and climate change,” Kumar says. “The hydrology group at ASU is doing tremendous work in the field, so the opportunity to collaborate with innovative researchers and apply my modeling technology was something I could not pass up.”

Outside the classroom, Kumar loves to run, hike, bike, travel and eat. His current goal is to run five kilometers in 25 minutes.

Meet the newest faculty members of the Fulton Schools of Engineering here.

Written by Monica Williams