Professor Kalliat T Valsaraj received his M.Sc. in Chemistry from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras in 1980 and his 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. He holds the titles of Charles and Hilda Roddey Distinguished Professor in Chemical Engineering and Ike East Professorship in Chemical Engineering. Currently he serves as an Associate Vice Chancellor within the Office of Research and 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), 175 peer-reviewed journal articles, 27 book chapters and 2 U.S. patents. His research has been supported by the NSF, EPA, DOE, DOD, USGS and private industries. He is a Fellow of both the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE). He recently received the Charles E Coates memorial award from the Baton Rouge sections of AIChE and ACS. He is also the recipient of the Distinguished Research Master award, the highest research award, from LSU.