Student & Faculty Highlights

Kosson Appointed as Cornelius Vanderbilt Professor of Engineering

Honoring internationally recognized expert and department leader

David S. Kosson, professor and chair of Civil and Environmental Engineering, received the honor of being named a CorneliusVanderbilt Professor of Engineering.  Dr. Kosson is an internationally recognized expert in safe and environmentally responsible management of large volume wastes and highly hazardous materials.

Professor Kosson's research group, in collaboration with the Energy Research Centre of The Netherlands, has developed the Leaching Environmental Assessment Framework (LEAF) for understanding the release of contaminants from wastes and construction materials under a wide range of use and disposal scenarios.  LEAF is providing a foundation for environmental regulation of coal fly ash and other materials at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the Netherlands Ministry of Environment and the European Union's Directorate General for the Environment.

Kosson is co-principal investigator of the Vanderbilt-led Consortium for Risk Evaluation with Stakeholder Participation (CRESP), a multi-university program working with the Department of Energy, regulators and other stakeholders to advance cost-effective, risk-informed cleanup of the nation's former nuclear weapons production sites and potential future used nuclear fuel storage and waste disposal sites.

For almost two decades, through the National Research Council of the National Academies, Kosson has advised the Department of Defense on safe disposal of chemical weapons, as required by international treaty, The Chemical Weapons Convention.

Kosson received his B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in chemical and biochemical engineering from Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey.