Tissa Illangasekare - Biography#

Illangasekare is the AMAX Endowed Chair of Civil and Environmental Engineering and the founding Director of the University/Industry/National Laboratory collaborative Center for the Experimental Study of Subsurface Environmental Processes (CESEP) at CSM. After completing a BSc (honors) degree at University of Ceylon and M.Eng. at Asian Institute of Technology, he earned a Ph.D. in Civil Engineering at Colorado State University (CSU). Before joining CSM in 1998, he served on the faculties at Louisiana State University and University of Colorado. His primary research is in flow and transport in porous and fractured media as applied to geologic systems, dams, and snow. He is recognized as a pioneer and a world leader in intermediate-scale experimentation. He used this testing approach with innovative modeling methods to improve the understanding of complex phenomena that emerge from interactions of multi-phase fluid flow and porous media heterogeneity at multiple scales. He has published many book chapters and close to 200 technical articles listed on the Web of Science. He has been active in national and international service, including journal editorships, leading a NATO and other workshops, holding office in IWA, IAHS, and President of the International Porous Media Society. He was Hydrology Editor for Earth Science Review, co-editor of Vadose Zone Journal, editor of American Geophysical Union's Water Resources Research. He is currently an Editor of Advances and Perspectives in Earth and Planetary Sciences published by AGU and the inaugural Specialty Chief Editor of Water and Human Health of Frontiers in Water. He has considerable international experience developed through collaborations in Europe (UK, Sweden, Denmark, Spain, The Netherlands, Germany) and Asia (Thailand, Japan, S. Korea, China, Taiwan, Nepal, Philippines, Sri Lanka). He has supervised/co-supervised 40 Ph.D. students and 48 MS thesis students, and 27 post-doctoral research associates from close to 30 countries. He led an international team to bring hydrologic science to bear humanitarian issues to coastal aquifer contamination in Sri Lanka after the 2004 tsunami. He continued these societally impactful efforts in 2017 by leading another international team to study a chronic kidney disease in Sri Lanka, India, and South America.