Celia selected as AAAS fellow
Michael Celia, the chair of Princeton’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, has been elected a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, one of the largest professional scientific organizations in the world.
Celia, the Theodora Shelton Pitney Professor of Environmental Studies, was nominated for his research on groundwater hydrology and on the mathematical modeling of water resources. In naming Celia a fellow, AAAS said he provides "a model for academia at its very best."
As part of his work on subsurface water flow, Celia is involved in a large interdisciplinary project focused on the key role that water plays in the semi-arid regions of sub-Saharan Africa. He is also a participant in Princeton’s Carbon Mitigation Initiative, where he is exploring the possible injection of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide into deep geologic formations as a mitigation option to counter global warming.
He was a contributing author to one of the special reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the group that shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with Vice President Al Gore.
During 2008, Celia gave a series of lectures across the U.S. and in nearly a dozen other countries on issues associated with geological storage of carbon dioxide. That lecture – the Darcy Distinguished Lecture – was sponsored by the National Ground Water Association.
Celia earned his Ph.D. in Civil Engineering from Princeton in 1983, and returned to the University in 1989 after serving on the faculty of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for several years.
New fellows will be presented with an official certificate and a rosette pin on Feb. 14, 2009, during the AAAS annual meeting in Chicago.
