Dr. SURAJ JENA

 

Brief Details:

I am Suraj Jena, a Postdoctoral Scholar at the College of Agricultural Sciences, Oregon State University, USA. Presently I am working on a Forensic Hydrology-based analysis for the compartmentalization of alluvial aquifers by identifying the role of hydrogeological architectures like structural barriers and channel belts causing the persistent high nitrate concentration in the last four decades in a Groundwater Management Area, in northeast Oregon. I started my real-world water problem-solving research activities from my master's thesis at IIT Kharagpur, where I worked on the feasibility of open wells to supply supplemental irrigation to rabi crops in rainfed agriculture of Keonjhar District, Odisha. Then, I worked at the Indian Institute of Water Management, Bhubaneswar as a Senior Research Fellow (SRF), investigating the feasibility of open wells for horticulture crops in Cuttack District, Odisha. Afterward, I joined my Ph.D. program as an SRF working on a multi-institutional project funded by the Ministry of IT, Govt. of India. In that project, I got the support and funding to conduct extensive field and laboratory experiments to generate my primary dataset and conduct simulation modeling, data mining, and machine learning-based analysis to comprehend the vadose zone and aquifer processes regulating recharge and groundwater variability at regional and basin scales. This research produced an app-based decision support system (DSS) that gives near-real-time decisions on groundwater and identifies feasible sites for well construction along with the design parameters (Demo: https://youtu.be/qdYbShAs_GM). The DSS received funding from the GITA, Govt. of India through the India-Israel Industrial R&D and Technology Innovation Fund during my Ph.D. to address the water scarcity issues in drought-prone Satara District, Maharashtra. I worked as a project manager on that project and gained experience in proposal writing, budget preparation, proposal defending, and multi-institutional project management. The success at Karnjkhop village of Satara District created a funding opportunity from the World Bank, where I worked as a project manager to implement technology transfer to rejuvenate watersheds for agricultural resilience in four micro-watersheds in Odisha before I moved to the United States for the postdoc. During these research endeavors, I have published 4- international journal publications with one in prestigious Water Resources Research, 2- book chapters, 9- international conference publications, and a few in the pipeline using a portion of the database generated. I have generated a huge hydrogeological database along with collaborations with IITs, public sector and private companies, and NGOs of India, Israel, and the USA, which will help in taking up challenging problems at a new institute and continue the strive to address the nation's year-round water security.     

Research

The research presentation will cover the regional to basin scale research during my Ph.D., the technology developed and transferred to the grassroots level, the postdoctoral research at the USA, the research outcomes in terms of publication and fund acquisitions, my capacity building activities, academic and industrial collaborations, my short and long-term goals, and significance of all these experiences for WRD&M department, IIT Roorkee. In the regional scale analysis, I put an effort into investigating the spatiotemporal variability of the groundwater level and determined the dominant hydrogeological and climatic controls regulate the observed variability. Then I jumped into the basin-scale study with the takeaways from the regional-scale study to go for a concurrent groundwater exploration and recharge potential mapping study taking the secondary data available. Simultaneously, I worked on field and laboratory experiments to generate my primary dataset, which helped in conducting the physical and machine learning (ML)-based modeling studies. In that process, I developed a generalizable pedotransfer function for the estimation of saturated hydraulic conductivity using the ML algorithm. Subsequently, developed the physical-based models for recharge and groundwater head and bridged that to the Bayesian Decision Network to develop a mobile app-based decision support system for groundwater development and management. The technology developed got two funding for technology transfer to address water issues in Maharashtra and Odisha. The postdoctoral research addresses the nitrate concentration issues in drinking water wells through hydrogeological analysis under the edges of Forensic Hydrology. These research activities have generated quite a few academic and industrial collaborations and some high-impact international publications along with a few publications and a patent/ copyright in the pipeline. Additionally, these research activities have created a huge scope of short and long-term research, which are in line with the major mandates of the WRD&M Department and may create an impactful research infrastructure. 

Teaching: 

My teaching presentation will cover the topic titled, “Surface Resistivity Survey for Groundwater Exploration” which is a heading falling under the Elective Course ‘Groundwater Development and Management (WRN-586)’ floating in the three masters programs and ‘Groundwater Hydrology (WRN-521)’ of master of technology in Water Resources Development. I will cover the fundamentals of groundwater exploration and the role of resistivity survey, its advantages and disadvantages. Subsequently, will discuss the instrumentation required and the design of the survey along with the data quality assurance protocols. The presentation will also enlist the different types of surface resistivity methods and their implications for different geological mappings and will end in deriving the basic equation for the surface resistivity survey using the concept of Ohm’s Law and the different forms of the same. This is an important fundamental for the master's students to learn as it will be an essential component in their career as practicing engineers and scientists, and have a Ph.D. in groundwater.    

Google Scholar Link:

https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=WzeZanwAAAAJ&hl=en