Linda Abriola joined the faculty of Brown University in January 2021 as the Joan Wernig and E. Paul Sorensen Professor of Engineering. Abriola is a member of both the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering, and a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union.
She comes to Brown from Tufts University, where she served as the inaugural Dean of the School of Engineering for 12 years (2003-2015), and later as university professor and Director of the Tufts Institute of the Environment. During her tenure as dean at Tufts, Abriola grew the tenure track faculty in engineering by 50 percent, expanded engineering’s footprint by more than 75,000 square feet, increased staffing to support its financial and research administration goals, and secured eight new endowed professorships.
Prior to joining Tufts, she was the Horace Williams King Collegiate Professor of Environmental Engineering at the University of Michigan. An expert in the multiphase transport, fate, and recovery/destruction of contaminants in the subsurface, she is the author of more than 160 refereed publications. She has been the recipient of numerous awards, including the National Ground Water Association’s Distinguished Darcy Lectureship (1996), the Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program Project of the Year Award in Remediation (2006, 2012), and appointment as a U.S. Science Envoy (2016). She serves on the Board of Directors of the Stockholm Environment Institute U.S. and was recently named to Union College’s Board of Trustees.
Abriola received her Ph.D. and M.S degrees from Princeton University and a B.S. degree from Drexel University, all in civil engineering.