Prof. Somasundaran elected Chair of Hoover Board of Award

- ADVERTISEMENT -

Professor Ponisseril Somasundaran of Columbia University has been elected Chair of the Hoover Board of Award which has celebrated the civic and humanitarian achievements of engineers since 1929.

Past recipients have included Jimmy Carter, Dwight Eisenhower, Lillian Gilbreth, A P J Abdul Kalam, N.R. Narayana Murthy, and Steve Wozniak, an Aug. 1, 2022 press release from Columbia University said.

The award is named in honor of Herbert Hoover, who led the effort to feed millions of Belgian and French refugees during World War I.  “It recognizes great, unselfish, non-technical services by engineers to humanity,” the press release from Columbia notes.

The Hoover Board consists of representatives from the American Institute of Chemical Engineers; American Institute of Mining, Metallurgical, and Petroleum Engineers; American Society of Civil Engineers; American Society of Mechanical Engineers; and Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.

Somasundaran is the La von Duddleson Krumb Professor of Mineral Engineering and Director of the Langmuir Center for Colloids and Interfaces at Columbia University.

After 5 years with the International Minerals and Chemical Corporation and Reynolds Industries, Somasundaran joined the Columbia University faculty.

With an M.S. and Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, he was inducted in 1985 into the National Academy of Engineering, among the highest professional distinctions that can be conferred on an engineer and later to the National Academy of Inventors, Chinese National Academy of Engineering, the Indian National Academy of Engineering, the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences and the Balkan Academy of Mineral Technology Sciences.

More recently, he was the sole Foreign Fellow elected to the Royal Society of Canada.

In 1990, Somasundaran was awarded the “Ellis Island Medal of Honor”. In March 2010, the President of India awarded him the Padma Shri, one of that country’s highest civilian honors.

He was appointed to the Board of Scientific Counselors (BOSC) of the US Environmental Protection Agency in 2014 and chair of its Chemical Safety and Sustainability Committee as well as the Hazardous Risk Committee and reappointed to the Board in December 2017.

His research has been concerned with a wide spectrum of environmental problems including Greener Chemistry, pollution control and remediation, controlled release in personal care, sludge treatment, waste water treatment, and nanotoxicity.

Now, he is also involved with decontamination of viruses to control Coronavirus.

He is the author/editor of 15 books and of more than 700 scientific publications and patents and editor of Encyclopedia of Surface & Colloid Science. He is the Honorary Editor-in-chief of the international journal “Colloids and Surfaces”.   He has served on many professional committees including National Research Council Panels, National Science Foundation, Department of Interior, Department of Energy, National Institute of Dental Research and National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences Advisory panels. He was the Chairman of the Board of the Engineering Foundation (1993-95).