Prof. Sekhar Muddu, a B.Tech. in civil engineering from JNT University, Hyderabad (1984), obtained his M.E. in Hydromechanics and Water Resources in 1987 and Ph.D. in Groundwater Hydrology in 2003, both from Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru.
Prior to his current position as Associate Professor, Department of Civil Engineering, as Associate Faculty, Centre for Infrastructure, Sustainable Transportation and Urban Planning, and Member, Indo-French Cell for Water Sciences, all at IISc, Bengaluru, Dr. Sekhar held many positions in research institutes and companies. These included visiting scientist, UMR-SAS, INRA, Rennes; Fellowship of CNRS; visiting scientist at University of Paul Sabatier, Toulouse; and LMTG, Observatoire Midi-Pyrenees, Toulouse, all in France; University of California, San Diego, USA, and Department of Mathematics & Computing Science, Technical University of Eindhoven, The Netherlands. He also worked as project leader at Transoft International, Paris, and Bengaluru where he developed Pollusol, a Fluidyn code.
Prof. Muddu’s research areas include groundwater hydrology, agro-hydrology, satellite hydrology and urban hydrogeology, and his interests include analysis of flow and reactive transport in groundwater systems, field-scale experiments in watershed hydrology, hydroclimatic and anthropogenic controls on groundwater, numerical methods, geospatial and geophysical methods, optimisation and inverse problems, and modelling of environmental hydraulic processes.
Some of his ongoing projects as principal investigator are adaptation of irrigated agriculture to climate change (sponsored by Indo-French CEFIPRA/IFCPAR, 2013-2016); estimation of soil hydraulic properties in a catchment using agro-hydrological models and microwave remote sensing (sponsored by ISRO-STC, 2013-2015); stochastic modelling of groundwater flow and contaminant transport at the proposed uranium tailings pond (sponsored by BRNS, 2012-2015); and hydrometerological feedbacks and changes in water storage and fluxes in northern India (sponsored by MoES-NERC Indo-UK Project, 2011-2015) as co-investigator.
He was also a prime consultant for more than 30 projects in the areas of urban groundwater hydrology, hydraulic model studies for pump-sump design, and hydraulic analysis and design of surge protection systems for water supply projects. His hydro-geological study was used for the Bangalore metro rail project for four underground tunnels.
Prof. Muddu has published about 50 peer reviewed publications in the areas of hydrology, water resources and environmental engineering. He has been awarded the Satish Dhawan Young Engineer Award in ‘Earth Sciences’ for 2010 from the Karnataka government. He was Member, Working Group on Water Database Development and Management for the 12th Plan, Planning Commission, 2011; Member, Project Appraisal and Monitoring Committee, Hydrology and Cryosphere, Ministry of Earth Sciences; and Member of Central Level Expert Group for overall reassessment of groundwater resources, Ministry of Water Resources, (2010-). He was honoured as Poste Rouge Fellowship of CNRS, France, in 2006.
