New Chair, New Vision

Atkinson has served as a faculty member in environmental and water resources engineering at UB for more than 32 years. His research interests include Great Lakes modeling (hydrodynamic, water quality), environmental fluid mechanics, ecosystem restoration, and sediment transport. He has graduated more than 70 graduate students, served as principal investigator or co-PI on more than $13 million in research funding, and authored 79 peer-reviewed publications, 32 technical reports, more than 100 conference publications, and eight book chapters.

He obtained his PhD from MIT and his MEng from Cornell. He joined UB after his PhD, but has also pursued guest stints at Technion - Israel Institute of Technology and at Hong Kong Polytechnic University. He has served UB in a number of capacities, including as Director of the Great Lakes Program at UB since 2000, and as CSEE Associate Chair for Academic Affairs since 2013.

“Professor Atkinson’s leadership of the department is critical to our collective success, and I am confident that CSEE will continue to excel in the years ahead with him at the helm,” said Liesl Folks, Dean of the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.

Atkinson takes on the position formerly held by Professor Andrew S. Whittaker, who led the department for six years.