Steven Chapra | Rubbish, Stink & Death

When Steven Chapra (PhD ’82) was 10-years-old he wrote a letter that marked the beginning of his work in environmental engineering.
“I wrote to [U.S. Senator] Barry Goldwater telling him that I did not think damming the Grand Canyon was such a good idea,” Chapra says.
Today, Chapra holds the Louis Berger Chair for Computing and Engineering in the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department at Tufts University. He is also a Fellow of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) and in 2013 he was chosen as one of the five inaugural Fellows of the Association of Environmental Engineering & Science Professors (AEESP).
Chapra has served the environment using his computer skills. He’s developed several environmentally-oriented software packages, including QUAL2K and LAKE2K, which are widely used for river and lake water-quality modeling. He learned about computers while earning his PhD at U-M.