Femeena Pandara Valappil, Ph. D., P.E.

Assistant Professor

Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering

The Pennsylvania State University, U.S.A

I am an Assistant Professor and Extension Specialist working in the Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering at Penn State. I use modeling, optimization and field-based methods to study ecohydrology and water quality, nutrient transport and cycling, best management practices, and land use/climate change impacts on watersheds. I was born and raised in India, where I completed my Bachelors in Civil Engineering and Masters in Water Resources Engineering. After moving to the United States, I earned my Ph.D. in Agricultural and Biological Engineering from Purdue University in 2019.
My graduate-level work focused on understanding nutrient uptake in streams using tracer studies and improving the representation of solute transport dynamics in watershed-scale models. During my post-doc at Penn State, I focused on the use of duckweed to promote a circular agricultural system by upcycling wastewater nutrients into valuable products. I also worked broadly on life cycle assessment and dynamic systems modeling for solving issues at the water-energy-food nexus. I am currently involved in the PCHES project where I do macro-scale hydrological modeling to evaluate multi-sector dynamics in coupled human-earth systems.

Curriculum Vitae

Started new job as Tenure-Track Assistant Professor (Fall 2024)!!

I am moving from a full-time research position to being a tenure-track faculty in the Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering at Penn State. In this role, I will be working with Penn State Extension to assess the water quality challenges in Pennsylvania and beyond, and study best management practices to improve our water resources.

New paper on duckweed's potential as a crop fertilizer!

Our new paper titled "Nutreint Cycling with Duckweed for the Fertilization of Root, Fruit, Leaf, and Grain Crops: Impacts on Plant-Soil-Leachate Systems" is out in Agriculture (Authors: Fernandez Pulido, C. R; Femeena, P. V.; and Brennan, R. A.). This was part of Fernanadex Pulido's Masters work at Penn State, looking at how applying duckweed as a fertilizer to different crops would impact nutrient leaching, crop uptake, soil fertility, and yield, when compared to conventional synthetic fertilizers.

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