“When you learn, teach, when you get, give.” – Maya Angelou.
Dr. Ramesh S .V. Teegavarapu (Dr. T.) is currently a professor and a former graduate program director & coordinator in the Department of Civil, Environmental, and Geomatics Department at Florida Atlantic University (FAU), Boca Raton, Florida, and founder and leader of the Hydrosystems Research Laboratory (HRL) in the department. He is a Fulbright Scholar and also a Fulbright Specialist.
Dr. T. is recognized as one of the World’s Top 2% Scientists by Elsevier and Stanford University compiled list of top scientists for every year from 2020 to 2024. He is also ranked 1142 out of 60423 top researchers in the world in the sub-field of environmental engineering.
He is also an affiliate researcher with the Freight Mobility Research Institute (FMRI), FAU. He is also research faculty at Center for Water Resiliency and Risk Reduction (CWR3). He has over 25 years of experience in hydrological modeling, water resources, and environmental systems. Before his tenure at FAU, he worked as Assistant Director of the Kentucky Water Resources Research Institute (KWRRI) and Assistant Professor (visiting and adjunct) at the University of Kentucky and as a Postdoctoral Scholar/Research Engineer at the University of California, Davis.
Dr. T.’s current research interests focus on climate variability and change, precipitation processes, statistical hydrology, water and environmental systems modeling and management, statistical learning, hydro analytics, and informatics, modeling extreme precipitation events, spatial interpolation, geostatistical methods, and hydrometeorology.
One of the focus research areas of Dr. T.’s is Precipitation Analysis and Estimation
Dr. Teegavarapu is the recipient of numerous prestigious national and international awards and recognitions. Among the most prominent are the Fulbright Scholar Award (2016–2018) and the Fulbright Specialist recognition (2019–2023) from the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, membership on the Open Panel of Commission for Hydrology Experts (OPACHE) of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), Global Initiative of Academic Networks (GIAN) Award from India’s Ministry of Human Resources Development (MHRD) and the Young Scientist Award from CSIR, India, ASCE-EWRI Task Committee Excellence Award for work on Radar Rainfall Data and the Engineers’ Council “Distinguished Engineering Educator Award” (2021). At Florida Atlantic University (FAU), he was honored with the university-level “Scholar of the Year” awards twice—first in 2017 as Associate Professor, and again in 2021 as Full Professor. Additionally, he received two ASCE-EWRI outstanding service awards for contributions as technical program co-chair.
His contributions to education have been recognized through two FAU Excellence and Innovation in Teaching Awards (2009, 2018), selection as one of eight finalists for FAU’s Distinguished Teacher of the Year Award, the College of Engineering and Computer Science (COECS) Faculty Teaching Award (2019). His research has been acknowledged with the College of Engineering and Computer Science Faculty Research Award (2020), a Frontiers in Assessment Methods for the Environment (FAME) Grant from AEESP, and a special invitation to speak at the International Framework on Water Dynamics Workshop at Kyoto University, Japan. He has also served as an invited researcher under the Brain Korea 21 (BK21) Program, was an NSERC Fellow in Canada, and earned the Canadian Water Resources Association (CWRA) Scholarship and the British Hydrological Society (BHS) Fellowship.
Over the past 25 years, Dr. Teegavarapu has delivered numerous invited lectures, plenary talks, and keynote addresses at leading international conferences, in addition to organizing technical sessions worldwide. His global contributions include presentations and engagements in Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, China, Colombia, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Greece, India, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Panama, Portugal, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom.
Dr. T. has served as a grant proposal reviewer for numerous prestigious organizations, including the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (USA), the National Fund for Scientific and Technological Research (FONDECYT, Chile), USGS 104G grants (NIWR, USA), the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC, UK), Canada Foundation for Innovation, NASA EPSCoR, NSERC Discovery Grant (Canada), and the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO). He has served extensively as an independent and expert reviewer for various international projects and agencies, including multiple years on NSF-GRF review panels. Currently, Dr. T. was a member of the International Leadership Team (LT) and on Climate Change for over six years under the International Association for Hydro-Environment Engineering and Research (IAHR). He previously served on the IAHR Climate Change Working Group (CWG) and now serves as Vice Chair of the Climate Change Adaptation Committee.
Dr. T. maintains an active international presence through invited lectures, keynote addresses, and academic appointments. He has delivered multiple guest lectures for the Civil Engineering program at Nirma University, India (February–March 2021, November 2022, September 2024). He held a visiting research professor position at Kobe University, Japan, for two separate terms (2015–2016 and 2019–2020). Additionally, he recently completed two visiting professor appointments in Italy at Politecnico di Torino and Università degli Studi di Brescia, teaching advanced graduate courses (Didattica di Eccellenza) on “Spatial Analysis for Water Resource Modeling and Management” and “Statistical Methods for Climate Variability and Change Assessments” at Politecnico di Torino in the summers of 2016 and 2022. In May–June 2024, he delivered a specialized lecture series titled “Advances in Statistical Hydrology in a Changing Climate” at the University of Brescia. Dr. T. also successfully completed a four-month Fulbright Scholar assignment at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India, during 2016–2017.
Dr. Teegavarapu has published extensively, contributing over 200 peer-reviewed research articles in prestigious international journals, conference proceedings, and book chapters. He is the sole author of three books, lead co-author of another, sole editor of one book, and sole or lead co-editor of five additional books. Currently, he is authoring twelve chapters across two forthcoming books. He has authored or co-authored 55 technical reports, seven white papers, and 53 extended abstracts for international conferences. Dr. Teegavarapu has provided expert peer-review services for 86 international journals and 50 international conferences, earning recognition for excellence from four journal editors. His scholarly work has garnered extensive recognition and has been cited widely, with over 3,200 citations, (Google Scholar : H-index of 28, and an i10-index of 63). His methodologies and publications have been adopted internationally for both classroom instruction and advanced research.
Dr. Teegavarapu serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of Hydrologic Engineering (ASCE) and the Journal of Hydroinformatics, and has served as a guest editor for a special issue on radar-based precipitation in the Journal of Hydrologic Engineering. Recently, one of his USGS-funded research projects was recognized among the best at the national level. Throughout his career, he has delivered more than 210 research talks, including invited lectures and session keynotes, presented two webinars, and showcased 57 research posters. He has also chaired, organized, and moderated 120 technical sessions at prominent national and international conferences and served in general and technical co-chair roles for two international conferences.
His research works have been supported by multiple national and state-level agencies, including NSF, FEMA, USGS, USDOT, USACE, FDEP, SFWMD, SWFWMD, NSERC, and PRIDE/NOAA, among others. From August 2006 through August 2024, he has successfully secured over six million dollars in research funding at FAU.
Additionally, Dr. Teegavarapu has developed several software/modeling tools, notably RAIN (Rainfall Analysis and INterpolation), the Bias Analysis Tool (BAT) for radar-based precipitation assessments, the Coastal Hydraulic Structure Evaluation Tool (CHSET), and the Quality Assurance (QA) Tool. His leadership roles include serving as vice-chair and chair of ASCE’s Surface Water Hydrology Technical Committee, vice-chair for task committees on “Radar Rainfall Datasets” and “Uncertainty Analysis Approaches in Hydrologic Modeling” within ASCE, and as a general co-chair for the Weather Radar and Hydrology (WRaH) international conference in 2014. He was a member of AGU’s Hydrology Group and currently serves as vice-chair of the Climate Change Adaptation Technical Committee within the International Association for Hydro-Environment Engineering and Research (IAHR). Furthermore, he is a member of three sections—Water Resources Assessment, Hydrology and Data Operations and Management, and Hydrological Forecasting and Prediction—in the Open Panel of Commission of Hydrology Experts (OPACHE) of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).
Dr. T.’s authored, edited and co-edited books. Link: Books
Conference