Biography

EDUCATION

Ph.D. in Civil & Environmental Engineering, May 2007

• • • • University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

      • Major: Structural Engineering

      • Certificate in Computational Science and Engineering

      • Dissertation title: Stabilized Finite Elements & A Domain Decomposition Method for First-Order Transient Problems 

M.S. in Applied Mathematics, May 2007

• • • • University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

M.S. in Civil & Environmental Engineering, May 2002

• • • • University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

B.Tech in Civil & Environmental Engineering, May 2000

• • • • Indian Institute of Technology - Madras, Chennai, India

PROFESSIONAL APPOINTMENTS

• • • Fall 2025 -- : Carl F. Gauss Professor

      • • • Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering, University of Houston

    • September 2022 -- present: Department Associate Chair

      • • • Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering, University of Houston

    • September 2017 -- August 2025: Associate Professor

      • • • Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering, University of Houston

    • April 2012 -- present: Courtesy Faculty Appointment

      • • • Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Houston

    • February -- April 2019: Visiting Associate

      • • • Department of Mechanical & Civil Engineering, California Institute of Technology (Caltech)

    • September 2011 -- August 2017: Assistant Professor

      • • • Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering, University of Houston

    • January 2009 -- August 2011: Assistant Professor

      • • • Department of Mechanical Engineering, Texas A&M University, College Station 

    • June 2007 -- December 2008: Postdoctoral Research Associate

      • • • Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 

    • August 2000 -- May 2007: Graduate Research Assistant

      • • • Center for Simulation of Advanced Rockets, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 

PROFESSIONAL SOCIETIES (present and past)

• • • Member, ASCE Engineering Mechanics Institute

    • Member, American Society for Engineering Education

    • Member, American Society of Mechanical Engineers

    • Member, Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 

Professor Kalyana Nakshatrala is currently the Carl F. Gauss Professor and Associate Chair of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Houston (UH). He also holds a courtesy appointment in the Department of Mechanical Engineering. In 2019, he served as a faculty associate at the California Institute of Technology. Before joining the faculty at UH, Professor Nakshatrala completed his postdoctoral studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), collaborating with researchers at Los Alamos and Pacific Northwest National Laboratories. He earned his Ph.D. in Civil Engineering from UIUC, along with a certificate in Computational Science and Engineering and two M.S. degrees—one in Civil Engineering and the other in Applied Mathematics. He holds a bachelor's degree in Civil Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology-Madras. Professor Nakshatrala is widely recognized for his contributions to research, teaching, and service. In 2023, he received the Andrea Prosperetti Research Computing Faculty Award, which honors exceptional achievement in scientific computing and data science within the Cullen College of Engineering at UH. His dedication to teaching has also been acknowledged through several prestigious awards, including the 2019 Kittinger Teaching Excellence Award—the highest teaching honor conferred by the Cullen College of Engineering—and the 2025 University of Houston Teaching Excellence Award, which cited his "outstanding achievement in teaching at the University of Houston." Deeply committed to student mentorship, Professor Nakshatrala has guided students to international recognition; notably, one of his doctoral students received the 2016 Robert J. Melosh Medal, awarded for the best student paper in Computational Mechanics. Beyond his roles in teaching and research, he remains actively engaged with the academic and professional communities. He serves as a review editor for the Water and Critical Zone journal and as an associate editor for the Journal of Engineering Mechanics, the flagship mechanics journal of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE). Most recently, he was elected to the Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory (EMSL) User Executive Committee (UEC), where he will serve a three-year term beginning in October 2025, providing strategic input to the EMSL management team on user-related issues.

ERODOS NUMBER 

My Erdos number is 4 in multiple ways.

P. Erdos ==> J. Pach ==> T. K. Dey ==> A. Hirani ==> K. B. Nakshatrala 

P. Erdos ==> P. Hell ==> J. Kratochvil ==> K. R. Rajagopal ==> K. B. Nakshatrala

ACADEMIC GENEALOGY