UBC Civil Engineering is pleased to welcome Dr. Nimish Pujara as an Associate Professor, bringing internationally recognized expertise in environmental fluid mechanics and the transport of particles in coastal environments. His research focuses on how the motion of particles—ranging from sediment and plastic pollution to plankton—shapes the sustainability, health, and resilience of coastal ecosystems.
Dr. Pujara’s work tackles one of the most complex challenges in coastal engineering: accurately predicting how waves influence the transport, suspension, and deposition of particles. His lab examines fundamental processes with applications that extend from improving models of beach sediment movement to understanding how wave action drives the accumulation of plastic pollution, and how particle size and shape affect settling speeds in wavy conditions. These insights inform sustainable coastal management, pollution mitigation, and ecosystem protection.
Dr. Pujara earned his undergraduate and master’s degrees in Engineering at the University of Cambridge, and his doctorate in Civil and Environmental Engineering at Cornell University. He later held a postdoctoral research and teaching position in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at UC Berkeley before joining the faculty at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. His contributions to environmental fluid mechanics have been recognized with the National Academies Gulf Research Program’s Early-Career Fellowship and the National Science Foundation’s CAREER Award.
His research interests span environmental and geophysical fluid dynamics, coastal engineering and oceanography, biological fluid mechanics, sediment transport, marine debris and plastic pollution, particle-laden flows, flow-biota interactions, ice–ocean interactions, and coastal ecosystem management.
“We are delighted to welcome Dr. Pujara to our department,” says Dr. Bernard Laval, Department Head of UBC Civil Engineering. “His research in coastal processes not only deepens our scientific understanding but also has direct implications for addressing global challenges related to climate change, pollution, and coastal resilience.”