CME Professor Krishna Reddy is passionate about his research on environmental remediation engineering. And it is this passion and expertise that piqued the interest of Dr. Claudio Cameselle and led him to UIC.
Cameselle, who is an associate professor at the University of Vigo in Spain, was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship and reached out to Reddy to work with him in his lab at UIC.
The Fulbright Scholarship is an extremely competitive, merit based scholarship that provides international education grants for students and faculty members. Receiving the scholarship is an honor, and hosting a scholar is a tremendous compliment.
“Fulbright is a very prestigious scholarship. Somebody with that scholarship must be really talented and vetted through the scholarship review process,” said Reddy, who is the director of CME’s Sustainable Engineering Research Laboratory and Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering Laboratory. “Selecting me and this university is a privilege. They could have gone to more places, but we came out to be on top. That really gives a little more satisfaction to what we are doing and the importance of our work is being recognized.”
“The basic idea is to work and learn about new technologies in soil remediation and green technologies,” said Cameselle. “I think this was a good destination to learn. I contacted Professor Reddy and we’ve been discussing what we can do – we share some common interests – and I thought it was a good idea to come to Chicago.”
The three-month collaboration will provide both researchers with the chance to learn from one another and bring new ideas to their research.
“He has an interesting background. He has a more environmental and chemical engineering background,” said Reddy. “I look at things from a civil and environmental engineering perspective and maybe he can add on more chemical and bioengineering perspectives. I think he will complement our ongoing research to develop green and sustainable environmental remediation technologies.”
Cameselle is also excited about the joint effort and looks forward to learning from Reddy.
“The group here is very active and Professor Reddy has very clever ideas,” said Cameselle. “I think I’m going to learn more [from him], but we can learn from each other.”
While the pair are only working together for few months, they both have grand ideas for a long-term alliance and research that can be applied to problems around the world.
“I think this will provide me with the opportunity to learn about the research going on in Spain or other parts of Europe,” said Reddy. “However, my research can be made more broadly applicable, not only here, but in Europe and other places.”
“I’m looking forward to the next three months being productive for both of us,” he added. “We should be able to do a lot together.”
Learn more about Professor Reddy and his research at http://geotech.lab.uic.edu.