Texas A&M AgriLife Research honors Srinivasan with Faculty Fellow title
Writer: Kay Ledbetter, 806-677-5608, [email protected]
Contact: Dr. Raghavan Srinivasan, 979-845-5069, [email protected]
COLLEGE STATION – Dr. Raghavan Srinivasan, Spatial Sciences Laboratory director at Texas A&M University and a Texas A&M AgriLife Research scientist, was honored with the title of Research Faculty Fellow at the recent Texas A&M AgriLife Awards Ceremony in College Station.
AgriLife Research established the Faculty Fellows program in 1998 to acknowledge and reward exceptional research faculty within the agency. According to the recognition, the Faculty Fellow designation is permanent and becomes a part of the individual’s title.
Srinivasan, also a professor in the Texas A&M ecosystem science and management department and a senior scientist for the Borlaug Institute for International Agriculture, was recognized for his leadership in the development of the Soil and Water Assessment Tool, or SWAT model.
SWAT is a public domain, watershed-scale computer simulation model developed by AgriLife Research and the U.S. Department of Agriculture Agricultural Research Service and Natural Resources Conservation Service.
It predicts impacts of weather, soils and land use on water supplies and pollution, soil erosion and fertility, and crop production, according to the nomination. Srinivasan’s contribution to this model was the pioneering integration of large-scale, internationally available natural resource databases and geographic information systems.
The nomination read:“As an ambassador for SWAT, Dr. Srinivasan has traveled worldwide to help researchers apply this model to their natural resource problems. A recent review paper in the Journal of Soil and Water Conservation identifies SWAT as the world’s most widely used nonpoint source pollution model over the past 15 years and names Dr. Srinivasan as one of the two most productive authors in the world in nonpoint source pollution research.”
Over the past nine years, he has conducted more than 60 international workshops for students and professionals in more than 20 countries,and thedemand is increasing each year.
Srinivasan earned his bachelor’s degree in India, his master’s in Bangkok and his doctorate from Purdue University, all in agricultural engineering.
He began his career with Texas A&M in 1992 as an agricultural engineer and associate research scientist at Temple. In 1999, he moved to College Station to become assistant director of the Mapping Science Laboratory and in 2000 became the director of the Spatial Sciences Laboratory.
He also has been recognized with the 2015 College of Agriculture Distinguished Agriculture Alumni Award, Purdue University; 2014 Vice Chancellor’s Award in Excellence for International Involvement; and the 2014 Texas A&M College of Agriculture and Life Sciences Dean’s Outstanding Achievement Award in the category of Interdisciplinary Research Team “Bacterial Source Tracking Team.”
Additionally, he was honored with Docteur Honoria Causa from Paul Sabatier University in Toulouse, France in July 2013 and with the 2012 Norman Hudson Memorial Award from the World Association of Soil and Water Conservation for the development and worldwide application of SWAT.
