Biochar: Fundamentals and Applications in Environmental Science and Remediation Technologies

Ajit K Sarmah is currently an Associate Professor in the Civil & Environmental Engineering Department at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. Earlier, he worked as Senior Research Scientist at Landcare Research, a Crown Research Institute (CRI) in Hamilton, NZ. He obtained BSc.Ag.Eng (Distinction) from the University of Allahabad, India, followed by MEng (Soil and Water) from the Asian Institute of Technology, Bangkok, Thailand. Dr. Sarmah worked at the University of Queensland, St. Lucia and obtained a MAgSc (Soil Physics) and completed his PhD from the University of Adelaide, South Australia, investigating the fate and transport modelling of herbicide in highly alkaline soils of Southern Australian wheat growing regions. Following his PhD, Dr. Sarmah spent a year at the University of Western Australia, as a Postdoctoral Fellow. He then took a joint appointment as a Visiting Scientist for few years at the School of Civil Engineering and School of Agronomy, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana, USA. At Purdue, Dr. Sarmah worked on a USEPA funded project investigating occurrences and environmental fate of endocrine disrupting chemicals and veterinary antibiotics in the environment. His research interests/expertise includes fate modelling and validation of organic chemicals, exposure modelling, biochar production, characterisation and application in construction and building sector, geotechnical research, composite manufacturing, and novel functional materials from waste coal for roading and paving materials. He served as Associate Editor for Science of the Total Environment (Elsevier) and currently is an Associate Editor for Environmental Management (Springer) and Editorial Board Member for Elsevier’s “Trends in Analytical Chemistry and two Springer Journals: Nanotechnology for Environmental Engineers and BIOCHAR. He has published 130 journal articles; 8 book chapters and his work has been cited ~10000 times and has h-index of 45. Ajit has supervised 14 PhD and several MEng students to completion to date and maintains a strong scientific network of scientists/engineers working in multi-disciplinary fields across the globe.