Advances in Remediation Techniques for Polluted Soils and Groundwater

Dr. Pankaj Kumar Gupta is a post-doctoral fellow in the faculty of environment, University of Waterloo since Dec., 2018. His current research is focussed on investigating the behavior of pollutants in peatlands (Canada) and mineral aquifers (India) under dynamically fluctuating groundwater table conditions. Majority of his works focus on two areas: (1) understanding the occurrence of bio-geo-chemical interactions when pollutants migrate into groundwater systems; and (2) developing remediation strategies. He received Ph.D. from Department of Hydrology, Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee on title “Fate and Transport of LNAPL under varying subsurface conditions”. He has been qualified National Eligibility Test (NET-Dec 2013) with Junior research fellowship conducted by University Grant Commission (UGC), Government of India. He has also qualified Agricultural Scientist Recruitments Boards NET in Environmental Sciences (2014). He is an awardee of AGU Student Travel Grant (2017), JPGU Travel Grant (2018), EXCEED-SWINDON & DAAD Germany Grant (2018). He serves as an editorial board member for SN Applied Sciences. He has published ~10 research papers, ~15 book chapters, 2 popular science articles. He reviewed several research articles for reputed journals including RSC Advances, Groundwater for Sustainable Development, ASCE JEE, ASCE Irrigation and Drainage, Env. Sc, Pollution Research, Ecohydrology, J. of Contaminant Hydrology etc. He will be serving as a convener for the session “GH027-Water is life: Understanding Geogenic Groundwater Contamination and Improving Public Health through Assessment, Water Quality Modeling, and Water Supply Management” in forthcoming AGU Fall Meeting 2019. He has performed many site restoration and remediation consultancy projects at industrial polluted sites in India. Dr Basant Yadav Ph.D. (Civil Engineering), is a postdoctoral fellow in Water Science Institute of Cranfield University (UK), working on groundwater quality and quantity management. Specific focus of Dr Yadav’s research includes flow and transport processes in ground water and in the vadose zone; hydroinformatics; managed aquifer recharge. Dr. Yadav's research emphasizes the Integration of Experimental, Numerical and data based modeling approaches for the better and efficient management of the groundwater quantity and quality. His work uses a range of numerical, statistical, and stochastic modeling approaches and experimental work to analyze the fate and transport of contaminant in saturated and unsaturated zones. Dr. Yadav is an agricultural engineer and received his M.Tech in hydrology jointly from Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee (India) and Technical University Stuttgart (Germany). He did his PhD from Indian Institute of Technology Delhi (India) on ‘Application of soft computing techniques in water quality and quantity modeling’. He was awarded prestigious National Postdoctoral fellowship (NPDF) in 2017 to work on his postdoctoral project in Indian Institute of Science Bangalore, India. He has received scholarships like DAAD (Germany), MHRD (India) for his masters and PhD work. He has authored/co-authored more than fifteen research publications in high impact journals such as journal of Hydrology, Hydrological Science, Journal of Environmental Engineering, Journal of Hydrologic Engineering, and Measurement Journal. Dr. Yadav has presented his work in highly reputed meeting like AGU (December- 2014, USA), AOGS (August-2017, Singapore), JpGU (June-2018, Japan). He is a member of the American Geophysical Union (AGU), Asia Oceania Geosciences Society (AOGS) and Japan Geoscience Union (JpGU). He is the reviewer of high repute journals like Science of Total Environment, Hydrological processes, Journal of Hydrology, Journal of Hydrologic Engineering, Water Resources Management, ISH Journal of Hydraulic Engineering and Journal of Hydroinformatics. Dr. Sushil Kumar Himanshu is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Food, Agriculture and Bioresources, School of Environment, Resources and Development, Asian Institute of Technology, Pathum Thani (Thailand). Dr. Himanshu’s scientific and professional interests are in the areas of Precision Farming, Climate-resilient Agriculture Systems, On-farm Irrigation Water Management, Remote Sensing and GIS Applications in Agriculture, Applications of Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) and Wireless Sensors in Agricultural Applications, Big Data Analysis and Applications, Machine Learning Applications in Agriculture, and Hydrologic/Cropping System Modelling.