Dayakar Penumadu, has been named as permanent head and Fred M. Peebles Professor of the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE). He has served in the role on an interim basis since 2007.
Penumadu holds the Joint Institute for Advanced Materials (JIAM) Chair of Excellence. He also is the principal investigator for a beam line proposal at ORNL’s Spallation Neutron Source. He successfully obtained a beam port allocation from SNS’s Neutron Scattering Science Advisory Council in November 2008.
His multidisciplinary research has resulted in numerous grants and contracts, including a $1.9 million project for the National Science Foundation, and he is currently the principal investigator for research activities funded by the Office of Naval Research, the Spallation Neutron Source, General Motors and the UT-ORNL Joint Institute of Neutron Sciences Fellowship Program.
Penumadu joined the College of Engineering (COE) faculty in 2001 after serving as an associate professor at Clarkson University in Potsdam, N.Y. He was the recipient of CEE’s Research Faculty Award in 2002, Outstanding Teacher Award in 2003 and Scholar Faculty Award in 2006, along with the Moses E. and Mayme Brooks Distinguished Professor Award from COE in 2006. He also was named as a COE Research Fellow for 2003-04 and 2004-05.
Among the important tasks before CEE are groundbreaking this fall on a new Civil and Environmental Engineering/Industrial and Information Building, and the accompanying move to the new facility within the next two to three years.
Penumadu received his bachelor’s degree from the Birla Institute of Technology and Science in Pilani, India. He received two master’s degrees, one from the University of Kentucky and the other from Purdue University, and his received his doctorate from the Georgia Institute of Technology, all in civil engineering.