Ducoste appointed to EPA Science Advisory Board

Dr. Joel Ducoste, professor in the Department of Civil, Construction, and Environmental Engineering at North Carolina State University, has been appointed by US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lisa Jackson to a three-year term on the EPA’s Science Advisory Board (SAB).

The SAB provides independent advice and peer review to the EPA administrator on the scientific and technical aspects of environmental issues. Ducoste has also been reappointed to a second three-year term on the SAB’s Drinking Water Committee, which provides advice to the administrator on the technical aspects of EPA’s national drinking water standards program.

“With my new appointment to the chartered SAB, I get the opportunity to help review scientific documents that may have been developed by all subcommittees or panels focused on various environmental science topics,” Ducoste said. “In the Drinking Water Committee, we are always receiving new technical information from researchers in the environmental field that may influence our understanding of the fate and transport of emerging pollutants or the removal of these pollutants with current or new processes.”

Service on the SAB, he added, is “a unique opportunity to help the EPA achieve environmental protection through the application of sound science.”

Ducoste is an internationally recognized expert in modeling water and wastewater treatment processes using computational fluid dynamics. His current research interests include physico-chemical processes in water treatment, computational fluid dynamics modeling, solid/liquid separation processes, chemical and UV disinfection, advance oxidation, water/wastewater process optimization, wastewater sewer collection system sustainability, and plant systems regulatory and metabolic modeling.

Ducoste is an associate editor for the American Association of Civil Engineers (ASCE) Journal of Environmental Engineering and a board member of the International Ultraviolet Association and the North Carolina Fulbright Association. He has served on advisory committees such as the American Water Works Association (AWWA) Particulate Committee, the National Science Foundation graduate fellowship awards committee, and the International Population Balance Model scientific and organizing committees.

He has also served on the North Carolina House of Representatives Special Committee on Offshore Energy Exploration Study and EPA SAB ad hoc committees such as the Environmental Economics Advisory Committee Augmented for the Consideration of the Value of Water to the US Economy and the committee for the Scientific and Technological Achievement Awards. In addition, Ducoste has served as AWWA project advisor for research projects funded by AWWA.

He holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in mechanical engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and a PhD in civil and environmental engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He joined the faculty at NC State in 1998.