By Paul Schattenberg
Saurav Kumar, Ph.D., always knew he would go into science, engineering and computing. There was no question.
“My dad was an electronic engineer/scientist,” he said. “Seeing him was inspirational, and generally, there was a love for science in my household.”
Now an assistant professor in the Department of Biological and Agricultural Engineering in Texas A&M University’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and a water specialist at the Texas A&M AgriLife Research Center at El Paso, Kumar described his childhood as also being steeped in a zeal for coding and computing.
Using coding to develop water system models
Kumar explained he has a love of the instant gratification that comes with coding. This was particularly true in his undergraduate work at Delhi Technological University — formerly Delhi College of Engineering — in New Delhi, India, where his coding experience dovetailed into scientific modeling.
“Most people in the environmental engineering department, at least as I remember it, were about chemistry and biology,” he said. “Developing a real model or a chemistry experiment or something like that will take days or months or even years to get some results that might show something interesting. But, with computer codes, you can get results very fast.”
Today Kumar is a water systems modeler. He gathers vast amounts of numerical data, then creates models to convert that data into a self-correcting tool that can help predict how a water system might behave under certain situations.
“Most importantly, I try to develop system models, specifically water system models, that can condense data and output something interesting for decision makers,” he explained. “That’s my big picture.”
And he is increasingly using high-tech tools — drones, satellite-level high perspective imaging and artificial intelligence — to get that big picture. However, when it came to water, he did not always see what was right in front of him. Or under him.
“I studied environmental engineering at Delhi College of Engineering, which is on the west side of New Delhi, but I was from the east side. The east and west sides of the city are essentially divided by the Yamuna River, so I had to cross it every day when I went to university,” he said.
“I crossed the river every day, but I never really noticed how polluted it was. It is one of the most polluted rivers in the world.”
System modeling for water bodies
It wasn’t until after Kumar graduated in 2004 and left the area for his master’s degree with the Singapore-Stanford Partnership Program of Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and Stanford University that he really started to see water system issues and get interested.