Prairie Research Institute: Technologies to Support Energy Transition
The seminar will highlight PRI’s innovative approaches to advancing energy transition technologies.
Professor Praveen Kumar joined as a faculty at UIUC in 1995 in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering where he has been since. His research deals with Hydrocomplexity, the quantitative understanding and prediction of emergent patterns of form and function that arise from complex non-linear multi-scale interactions between soil, water, climate, vegetation, and human systems; and how this understanding can be used for innovative solutions to water and sustainability challenges. He has made extensive, deep and signature contributions pertaining to information theory in geosciences, biosphere-hydrosphere interactions, multi-scale variability of hydrologic processes, hydro-geomorphology and hydroinformatics. He is the leader in the study of Critical Zone in human modified environments. He presently serves as the Executive Director of the Prairie Research Institute (PRI) which houses all five of the Illinois State Scientific Surveys. He is responsible for all policy and operational decisions for PRI with over 1000 employees. He served as the Director of NSF funded (IMLCZO) Intensively Managed Landscapes Critical Zone Observatory (2013-2021), and presently serves as the Director of NSF funded (CINet) Critical Interface Network in Intensively Managed Landscapes (2020-).