Auroop R. Ganguly

COE Distinguished Professor,  Civil and Environmental Engineering
Co-Director,  Global Resilience Institute
Director, AI for Climate & Sustainability,  The Institute for Experiential AI
Director,  Sustainability & Data Sciences Laboratory (SDS Lab)
Professor (by courtesy),  Khoury College of Computer Sciences
Professor (by courtesy),  Marine and Environmental Science
Professor (by courtesy),  Political Science
Professor (by courtesy),  School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs
Chief Scientist, Advanced Computing, Mathematics, and Data Division, Physical and Computational Sciences Directorate,  US Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Richland, WA
Co-Founder & Chief Scientific Adviser,  risQ Inc.

Contact

Social Media

Office

  • Room 475, Snell Engineering
  • 617-373-3710 (email preferred)

Lab

  • 216 Mass Ave, Boston, MA 02115 (virtual: sdslab.io)
  • 617-373-6005 (email preferred)

Research Focus

Geoscience (Climate Science, Hydrology, Hydrometeorology); Engineering (Infrastructure Resilience, Water Resources, Lifeline Systems); Data Sciences (Machine Learning, Data Mining, Nonlinear Physics)

About

Auroop R. Ganguly is a Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, a College of Engineering Distinguished Professor, and Co-Director of the Global Resilience Institute, at Northeastern University in Boston, MA, where he has affiliate appointments with the Khoury College of Computer Science and the School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs. His research intersects weather and hydrologic extremes under climate change, lifeline infrastructures resilience under compound extremes, as well as machine learning and nonlinear physics. He has a joint role as a Chief Scientist at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. Ganguly co-founded the Boston-based climate analytics startup risQ. Prior to Northeastern, Ganguly worked at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, a research institute of the US Department of Energy, and at Oracle Corporation, along with a best-of-breed called Demantra Inc. which was subsequently acquired by Oracle. He has been in review panels of the United Nations (UN) Environmental Programme and other US and global agencies, his work has been cited by the UN and US intergovernmental and national reports, and he has delivered invited/keynote talks at workshops organized by the US National Academies and NSF. Ganguly is a Fellow of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), a Senior Member of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) as well as a Senior Member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), and obtained a PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

Education

  • Ph.D., Civil & Environmental Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, 2002
  • M.S., Civil Engineering, University of Toledo, Toledo, OH, 1997
  • B.Tech., Civil Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, India, 1993

Honors & Awards

Ganguly has published in interdisciplinary journals such as Nature, Nature Climate Change, PNAS, PLOS One, Nature’s Scientific Reports, won best paper awards in highly selective machine learning or AI conferences such as ACM Knowledge Discovery and Data mining (KDD) and SIAM Data Mining (SDM), best poster awards at AGU (American Geophysical Union) and AMS (American Meteorological Society) meetings, published a textbook on Critical Infrastructures Resilience and an edited book on Knowledge Diacovery from Sensor Data, produced papers in top disciplinary journals spanning areas such as geosciences, infrastructures, climate, water, information theory and data science, developed US patents in climate risks and infrastructures resilience, and co-founded a climate analytics startup. Prior to his role as a professor at Northeastern University, Ganguly was a senior scientist at US DOE’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) in the computational science and engineering division, where he helped define their knowledge discovery theme and won several awards for significant research contributions and outstanding mentorship. He has led or co-led funded research projects worth about ~$30 Million in his independent research career. Before Northeastern and ORNL, Ganguly was the product manager of Demand Planning at Oracle Corporation, and a senior product manager of Analytics and Strategy at Demantra Inc., which in turn was subsequently acquired by Oracle. Ganguly considers his biggest accomplishment to be the success of his current and former students, postdocs and visiting professors, who range from scientists at federal agencies and national laboratories like NASA and ORNL, leaders in the private industry including the CEO of a successful startup, as well as successful and award-winning global academics at places like the Indian Institute of Technology campuses.

NSF News & Highlights

 

Teaching Interests

  • CIVE 3464 (Undergraduate): Probability and Engineering Economy for Engineers (Spring, Fall)
  • CIVE 5363 (Undergraduate/Graduate): Climate Science, Engineering Adaptation, and Policy (Spring, Fall)
  • CIVE 7100 (Graduate): Applied Time Series and Spatial Statistics (Spring)
  • CIVE 7110 (Graduate): Critical Infrastructure Resilience (Fall)
  • CIVE 4777 & CIVE 4778 (Undergraduate): Climate Change Science and Policy Abroad (Summer)

Leadership Positions

Appointments: Private Industry and Government

  • (Joint) Chief Scientist, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Richland, WA, 2020-Now
  • Co-Founder and Chief Scientific Adviser, risQ Corp., Cambridge, MA, 2016-Now
  • Senior Scientist, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, TN, 2004-2011
  • Co-Founder & Chief Technology Officer, AnalyticsSmart Inc., Tampa, FL, 2003-2004
  • Senior Product Manager, Demantra Inc., (Acquired by Oracle) Waltham, MA, 2003
  • Product Manager of Demand Planning, Burlington, MA, and Time Series Software Developer, Nashua, NH, Oracle Corporation, 1998-2003

Appointments: US Academia

  • Professor, Northeastern University, Boston, MA, 2011-Now
  • Joint Faculty (with ORNL), University of Tennessee, Knoxville, 2006-2011
  • Visiting Faculty, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL, 2003-2004

Appointments: Indian Academia

  • Guest Professor, Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar, Gujarat, India, 2021-Now
  • International Visiting Professor, Computer Science and Environmental Science, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, West Bengal, India, 2018-2021
  • Visiting Professor, Interdisciplinary Program on Climate, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Mumbai, India, 2013-2015

Professional Affiliations

  • American Geophysical Union (AGU)
  • American Meteorological Society (AMS)
  • Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)
  • Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
  • American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE)
  • American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)

 

Research Overview

Geoscience (Climate Science, Hydrology, Hydrometeorology); Engineering (Infrastructure Resilience, Water Resources, Lifeline Systems); Data Sciences (Machine Learning, Data Mining, Nonlinear Physics)

Ganguly’s research domains include urban sustainability (e.g., initial ~25 min of this National Academies presentation) and climate change (e.g., this NSF news and this Nature highlight), as well as spatiotemporal machine learning (e.g., see Fig 2b of this Nature Perspective and this Nature commentary) and network science for lifeline infrastructure (e.g., this DoD SERDP video).

Sustainability & Data Sciences Laboratory

Our focus has been on understanding the science of climate extremes and uncertainty, translation to impacts with a particular focus on the water sector, and informing policy in the context of adaptation and mitigation. Our approaches blend interdisciplinary data sciences with physical process understanding from climate model simulations and remote or in-situ sensor-based observations.

Sustainability & Data Sciences Laboratory

Selected Research Projects

  • Suite of “Experiential PhD” projects (NASA, ORNL, PNNL, risQ, others): The SDS Lab provides a relativelty unique opportunity to PhD students and postdoctoral associates to work closely with our collaborators (including SDS Lab alums) at NASA Ames, US DOE Labs such as ORNL and PNNL, as well as the private sector including startups such as the SDS Lab spinout risQ. The SDS Lab students or postdocs on these experiential projects often end up spending substantial time on-site at the federal agencies (e.g., NASA), national labs (e.g., ORNL and PNNL), and the private sector (e.g., risQ) and are usually also funded by them at Northeastern. The students and postdocs have often been absorbed into these or related organizations post-graduation depending on interests.
  • CRISP Type 2: Interdependent Network-based Quantification of Infrastructure Resilience (INQUIRE)
    Co-Principal Investigator, National Science Foundation
  • CyberSEES: Type 2: SEA-MASCOT: Spatio-temporal Extremes and Associations : Marine Adaptation and Survivorship under Changes in extreme Ocean Temperatures
    Co-Principal Investigator, National Science Foundation
  • NICE: Networked Infrastructures under Compound Extremes
    Principal Investigator, Department of Defense Strategic Environmental Research & Development Program
  • Multigraph Theeory for National Critical Functions
    Co-Principal Investigator, Department of Homeland Security (via joint Chief Scientist role at US DOE’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory)

Research Centers and Institutes

NSF Expeditions in Computing (graduated)

Northeastern Global Resilience Institute

Twenty-Five Selected Publications (led by Ganguly and/or his students/postdocs)

Google Scholar

Faculty

Mar 11, 2024

Ganguly Team Awarded Funds to Develop Urban Visualization and Data Analysis Toolkit

Industry partner Kitware, a software development company who is collaborating with CEE Distinguished Professor Auroop Ganguly and his research team, was awarded $1.6 million in DOE Phase II SBIR funds for the development of an Urban Visualization and Data Analysis Toolkit to address urban climate change threats. The Northeastern team will develop translational quantitative methods for the analysis of interconnected infrastructure systems.

Faculty

Feb 21, 2024

Fending Off Cyberthreats in the Wake of Natural Disasters

Auroop Ganguly, CEE distinguished professor, and director of AI for Climate and Sustainability and co-director of Northeastern’s Global Resilience Institute, and his interdisciplinary team, are conducting a U.S. Department of Defense funded study on recovery from disruptions to critical infrastructure, both military and civilian.

Faculty

Jan 17, 2024

Ganguly and Melodia Elevated to ACM Distinguished Members

COE Distinguished Professor Auroop Ganguly of CEE and William Lincoln Smith Professor Tommaso Melodia of ECE were recognized as Distinguished Members of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) for their significant contributions. Ganguly was elevated for foundational advances, sustained service, and entrepreneurial accomplishments in climate data mining and machine learning, and Melodia was recognized for […]

Faculty

Jan 17, 2024

Reintroducing Bee-like Species to Collapsing Ecosystems

CEE Distinguished Professor Auroop Ganguly and Assistant Professor Tarik Gouhier conclude that honeybees are the simplest and most effective species to reintroduce to ecosystems collapsing from climate change. Their research was published in the journal Communications Biology.

Faculty

Jan 11, 2024

Using AI to Prepare for Severe Weather

CEE Professor Auroop Ganguly predicts that AI will play a significant role in predicting and preparing for future weather and climate disasters.

Faculty

Dec 22, 2023

Reviving Ecosystems: Maximizing Biodiversity Recovery Through Network-Based Restoration Strategies

Alumnus Udit Bhatia, PhD’18, civil and environmental engineering, and Auroop Ganguly, COE distinguished professor of CEE, were two of the co-authors of the paper “Network-based Restoration Strategies Maximize Ecosystem Recovery” published in Communications Biology. The paper discusses how global biodiversity loss demands predictive frameworks for ecosystem collapse and effective restoration strategies.

PhD

Dec 12, 2023

Predicting Flooding with AI Models

Following deadly floods in Tennessee, Puja Das, PhD’27, interdisciplinary engineering, is working on a NASA-funded project exploring AI-driven rainfall prediction models.

Undergraduate

Nov 15, 2023

CEE Student Nominated for Churchill-Kanders Scholarship

Environmental engineering and health science student Hyun Lee, E’23, was nominated for the Churchill-Kanders Scholarship, which was established in 2017 to address the growing divide between science and public policy by funding a Master’s in Public Policy at Cambridge University.

Faculty

Oct 20, 2023

A Climate Dialogue to Remember: South Asia and the 2023 Monsoons

A Dialogue of Civilizations course led by CEE Professor Auroop Ganguly traveled to India during the summer of 2023 to study climate science and engineering, adaptation and policy, data science and artificial intelligence, and cultural immersion.

PhD

Oct 19, 2023

Aayushi Mishra Joins Northeastern CEE PhD Program as Inaugural Lizzy Warner Fellow

Aayushi Mishra, a new student in the Interdisciplinary PhD program in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, was awarded the inaugural Mary Elizabeth “Lizzy” Warner ’22 Fellowship.

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