Kalliat T. Valsaraj

Professor Kalliat T Valsaraj is the Vice President for Research and Economic Development at LSU. He holds the titles of Charles and Hilda Roddey Distinguished Professor in Chemical Engineering and Ike East Professor in Chemical Engineering. He is elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the National Academy of Inventors (NAI) and the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE).

Dr. Valsaraj received the M.Sc. in Chemistry from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras in 1980 and a Ph.D in Chemistry (with Chemical Engineering as Minor) from Vanderbilt University in 1983. He is a Professor in the Cain Department of Chemical Engineering and served as the Department Chair from 2005 to 2011. From 2011-13, he served as the Associate Vice Chancellor for Research and Economic Development at LSU. Since 2013, he has been serving as the Vice President for Research & Economic Development at LSU. His research area is in environmental chemical engineering. He has broad research experience in waste water treatment, atmospheric chemistry and, modeling the fate and transport of contaminants in all three environmental media (air, water and soil/sediment).

His present research is concerned with the transformations of pollutants on atmospheric aerosols (fog, rain, ice and snow), mercury sequestration in sediments and, high pressure / low temperature phase equilibrium studies of relevance to the sub-sea oil/gas spills. He has provided consulting and expert opinions to various industries, State and Federal agencies. He is the author of 1 textbook (with three editions), 200 peer-reviewed journal articles, 29 book chapters and 2 U.S. patents. His research has been supported by the NSF, EPA, DOE, DOD, USGS and several private industries and foundations.