Dr. Tissa H. Illangasekare was appointed to the U.S. Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board on January 18, 2017, by President Barack Obama.
Dr. Illangasekare presently holds the AMAX Endowed Distinguished Chair of Civil and Environmental Engineering position at the Colorado School of Mines. He is also the founding director of the Center for Experimental Study of Subsurface Environmental Processes, a university/industry/national laboratory collaborative center. His research experience and expertise are in mathematical and numerical modeling of flow and transport in porous and fractured media, management of hydrocarbon, organic, and nuclear wastes, saturated and unsaturated zone processes, multiphase flow, carbon storage, modeling of land-atmospheric interaction, remediation of contaminated sites, and application of sensor technologies for environmental, soil, and hazard monitoring.
Dr. Illangasekare has served on many national and international advisory boards, including the National Academy of Science’s Nuclear and Radiation Studies Board. He has also been a member of several National Research Council committees that include, “Subsurface Contamination at DOE Complexes” and “Management of Certain Radioactive Waste Streams Stored in Tanks at Three Department of Energy Sites.” He has served as a member of the Board of Directors of the Consortium of Universities for the Advancement of Hydrologic Sciences. He served and President of the International Porous Media Society (InterPore). Dr. Illangasekare served as editor of Water Resources Research and of Earth Science Review and co-editor of Vadose Zone Journal. He is currently an editor of American Geophysical Unions (AGU) Advances and Perspectives in Earth and Planetary Systems and the Section Chief Editor of Frontiers in Water and Human Health. He is a Fellow of the AGU, the American Association for Advancement of Science, the American Society of Civil Engineers, Soil Science Society of America, and National Academy of Sciences of Sri Lanka. He is a registered Professional Engineer and a Professional Hydrologist, Board Certified Environmental Engineer by the American Academy of Environmental Engineers (by eminence), and Diplomate of American Academy of Water Resources Engineers. Dr. Illangasekare has published over 200 refereed journal papers and contributed to 15 book chapters. He is the recipient of the 2012 Darcy Medal from the European Geosciences Union (EGU) for outstanding scientific contributions in water resources research and engineering. He was the 2015 recipient of the AGU’s Langbein Lecture Award (Bowie lecture) given in recognition of lifetime contributions to the science of hydrology and received the 7th Prince Sultan Abdulaziz International Prize for Groundwater at the United Nations from the Secretary General in 2016. He was a Shimizu Visiting Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and a Global Climate Energy Program Visiting Professor at the Department of Earth Resources Engineering at Stanford University. He was a Visiting Scholar in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at University of California at Berkeley. He is currently a Visiting Professorial Fellow in the School of Civil & Environmental Engineering at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia.
Dr. Illangasekare received a BSc (Honors) degree in civil engineering (1971) from the University of Ceylon, a M.Eng. degree in hydrology and water resources development from the Asian Institute of Technology (1974), and a Ph.D. (1978) in Civil Engineering from Colorado State University. He also received an Honorary Doctorate in Science and Technology from Uppsala University, Sweden.
Dr. Illangasekare resides in Boulder, Colorado.