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
- a.ganguly@northeastern.edu
- Snell Engineering 400
360 Huntington Ave
Boston, MA 02115
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
- 2016: Nature & Nature Climate Change papers
- 2015: Nature Paper: climate change & coastal upwelling
- 2014: Climate change research goes to the extremes
- 2012: ScienceLives Interview
- 2012: NSF Newsletter (pg. 3: “Faces of NSF Research”)
- 2011: Nature Climate Change: Indian rainfall extremes
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.
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)
- Ganguly, A.R. and colleagues, 2021. Science-integrated Artificial-intelligence for Flooding and precipitation Extremes (SAFE) (No. AI4ESP1047). AI4ESP: White Paper, US DOE BER Call. AI4ESP and US DOE.
- Kodra, E.*, Bhatia, U.*, Chatterjee, S., Chen, S.* and Ganguly, A.R., 2020. Physics-guided probabilistic modeling of extreme precipitation under climate change. Scientific Reports, 10, 10299.
- Yadav, N.*, Chatterjee, S. and Ganguly, A.R., 2020. Resilience of urban transport network-of-networks under intense flood hazards exacerbated by targeted attacks. Scientific Reports, 10, 10350.
- Konduri, V.S.*, Kumar, J., Hargrove, W.W., Hoffman, F.M. and Ganguly, A.R., 2020. Mapping crops within the growing season across the United States. Remote Sensing of Environment, 251, 112048.
- Bhatia, U.*, Sela, L. and Ganguly, A.R., 2020. Hybrid method of recovery: combining topology and optimization for transportation systems. Journal of Infrastructure Systems, 26(3), 04020024.
- Bhatia, U.* and Ganguly, A.R., 2019. Precipitation extremes and depth-duration-frequency under internal climate variability. Scientific Reports, 9, 9112.
- Duffy, K.*, Vandal, T.*, Li, S., Ganguly, S., Nemani, R. and Ganguly, A.R., 2019. DeepEmSat: Deep Emulation for Satellite Data Mining. Frontiers in Big Data, 2, 42.
- Kumar, D.* and Ganguly, A.R., 2018. Intercomparison of model response and internal variability across climate model ensembles. Climate Dynamics, 51(1), 207-219.
- Clark, K.L.*, Bhatia, U.*, Kodra, E.A.* and Ganguly, A.R., 2018. Resilience of the US national airspace system airport network. IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems, 19(12), 3785-3794.
- Vandal, T.*, Kodra, E.*, Dy, J., Ganguly, S., Nemani, R. and Ganguly, A.R., 2018, July. Quantifying uncertainty in discrete-continuous and skewed data with Bayesian deep learning. In Proceedings of the 24th ACM SIGKDD International Conference on Knowledge Discovery & Data Mining (2377-2386).
- Vandal, T.*, Kodra, E.*, Ganguly, S., Michaelis, A., Nemani, R. and Ganguly, A.R., 2017, August. DeepSD: Generating high resolution climate change projections through single image super-resolution. In Proceedings of the 23rd ACM SIGKDD International Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (1663-1672).
- Ganguli, P.* and Ganguly, A.R., 2016. Space-time trends in US meteorological droughts. Journal of Hydrology: Regional Studies, 8, 235-259.
- Ganguli, P.* and Ganguly, A.R., 2016. Robustness of meteorological droughts in dynamically downscaled climate simulations. JAWRA Journal of the American Water Resources Association, 52(1), 138-167.
- Wang, D.*, Gouhier, T.C., Menge, B.A. and Ganguly, A.R., 2015. Intensification and spatial homogenization of coastal upwelling under climate change. Nature, 518(7539), 390-394.
- Bhatia, U.*, Kumar, D.*, Kodra, E.* and Ganguly, A.R., 2015. Network science based quantification of resilience demonstrated on the Indian Railways Network. PLOS ONE, 10(11), e0141890.
- Kodra, E.* and Ganguly, A.R., 2014. Asymmetry of projected increases in extreme temperature distributions. Scientific Reports, 4, 5884.
- Kumar, D.*, Kodra, E.* and Ganguly, A.R., 2014. Regional and seasonal intercomparison of CMIP3 and CMIP5 climate model ensembles for temperature and precipitation. Climate Dynamics, 43(9-10), 2491-2518.
- Steinhaeuser, K.*, Ganguly, A.R. and Chawla, N.V., 2012. Multivariate and multiscale dependence in the global climate system revealed through complex networks. Climate Dynamics, 39(3-4), 889-895.
- Kao, S.C.* and Ganguly, A.R., 2011. Intensity, duration, and frequency of precipitation extremes under 21st‐century warming scenarios. Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, 116(D16).
- Kodra, E.*, Steinhaeuser, K.* and Ganguly, A.R., 2011. Persisting cold extremes under 21st‐century warming scenarios. Geophysical Research Letters, 38(8).
- Steinhaeuser, K.*, Chawla, N.V. and Ganguly, A.R., 2011. Complex networks as a unified framework for descriptive analysis and predictive modeling in climate science. Statistical Analysis and Data Mining: The ASA Data Science Journal, 4(5), 497-511.
- Ganguly, A.R., Steinhaeuser, K.*, Erickson, D.J., Branstetter, M., Parish, E.S., Singh, N., Drake, J.B. and Buja, L., 2009. Higher trends but larger uncertainty and geographic variability in 21st century temperature and heat waves. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 106(37), 15555-15559.
- Khan, S.*, Bandyopadhyay, S., Ganguly, A.R., Saigal, S., Erickson III, D.J., Protopopescu, V. and Ostrouchov, G., 2007. Relative performance of mutual information estimation methods for quantifying the dependence among short and noisy data. Physical Review E, 76(2), 026209.
- Kuhn, G.*, Khan, S.*, Ganguly, A.R. and Branstetter, M.L., 2007. Geospatial–temporal dependence among weekly precipitation extremes with applications to observations and climate model simulations in South America. Advances in Water Resources, 30(12), 2401-2423.
- Khan, S.*, Kuhn, G.*, Ganguly, A.R., Erickson III, D.J. and Ostrouchov, G., 2007. Spatio‐temporal variability of daily and weekly precipitation extremes in South America. Water Resources Research, 43(11).
Sep 13, 2023
Flooding in Libya a ‘gray swan’ event, but dam infrastructure worldwide ‘not ready’ to meet the demands of a changing climate, expert says
CEE Professor Auroop Ganguly described the extreme flooding in Libya, caused by Storm Daniel, as a “gray swan” event or a rare but predictable event that can reveal deficiencies in infrastructure readiness and resilience.
Sep 01, 2023
Summer 2023 marks second rainiest in Boston, forecasters say
CEE Professor Auroop Ganguly was featured in the Boston Globe article “Summer 2023 marks second rainiest in Boston, forecasters say.”
Jun 15, 2023
Indonesia is Building a New Capital. Will It be a Model Amid Climate Change?
CEE Professor Auroop Ganguly and Chair Jerome Hajjar emphasize the importance of water management, sustainability, and potential challenges regarding the construction of Indonesia’s new capital city, Nusantara.
May 31, 2023
Sustainability and Data Sciences Laboratory Invited to Present at United Nations HQ
The Sustainability and Data Sciences Laboratory presented at a United Nations event on disaster risk reduction, highlighting the importance of data-driven climate resilience and resilient infrastructure.
May 24, 2023
How AI is Making Weather Forecasts More Accurate
Interdisciplinary engineering alumni Kate Duffy, PhD’21, and Thomas Vandal, PhD’18, both worked as NASA scientists before creating the new start-up, Zeus AI, which uses AI and machine learning to analyze data from satellites to improve weather forecasting.
May 04, 2023
Ministerial Delegation from the Government of Indonesia Visits the SDS Lab at Northeastern
A high-level delegation from BAPPENAS, the Indonesian Ministry for National Development Planning, visited the Sustainability and Data Sciences Laboratory (SDS Lab) at Northeastern University on May 1, 2023 to discuss long-term collaborations. The ministerial delegation from Indonesia included the Chief Secretary Dr. Taufik Hanafi, the Director of Data and Information Dr. Agung Indrajit, Special Adviser Dr. Kemal Taruc, […]
Apr 27, 2023
FY24 TIER 1 Award Recipients
Congratulations to the 12 COE faculty and affiliates who were recipients of FY24 TIER 1 Interdisciplinary Research Seed Grants for 11 different projects. Environmentally Sustainable and Socially Equitable Congestion Mitigation in Urban Transportation Systems Seyede Fatemeh Ghoreishi (Civil & Environmental Engineering/Computer Science), Daniel Aldrich (Political Science/SPPUA) Wind View AI Nathan Post (Roux), Enrico Bertini (Computer […]
Jan 25, 2023
The Dependencies Between El Niño and River Flow
Research conducted by ECE Professor Jennifer Dy and CEE Professor Auroop Ganguly on “Explainable deep learning for insights in El Niño and river flows” was published in Nature.
Jan 24, 2023
Faculty and Staff Awards 2023
Congratulations to all the winners of the faculty and staff awards, and to everyone for their hard work and dedication during the 2022-2023 academic school year. COE Distinguished Faculty Award Yun Raymond Fu, ECE Auroop Ganguly, CEE Luke Landherr, ChE Sinan Müftü, MIE Mark Niedre, BioE Alison Nogueira, Co-op Nian Sun, ECE Constantinos Mavroidis Translational […]
Jan 18, 2023
Atmospheric Rivers can Lead to Massive Flooding and Deaths
MES/CEE Assistant Professor Samuel Munoz and CEE Professor Auroop Ganguly explain how atmospheric rivers can lead to devastating floods. What are atmospheric rivers? Will climate change make them worse? Main photo: In an aerial view, a car and a pickup truck are seen inside a sinkhole as another storm created by a series of atmospheric […]