Dr. Seneshaw Tsegaye joined FGCU as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Environmental and Civil Engineering in August 2017. Dr. Tsegaye was a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Patel College of Global Sustainability at the University of South Florida (USF).

During his time at USF, Dr. Tsegaye served as the Director of Climate Change and Sustainability Concentration and led the development of the curriculum and content for several in-class and online graduate courses. His diversified expertise across several research fields is attributed to his dedication to academic and field research. Such scholastic endeavors were perpetuated by his rigorous educational background, his strong international collaboration, and many years of research and teaching experience in different countries.

Dr. Tsegaye received a Master of Science in Integrated Urban Engineering from UNESCO-IHE Institute for Water Education, Netherlands; and Ph.D. in Civil and Environmental Engineering with specialization in water resources from the University of South Florida, USA. In the past, Dr. Tsegaye has worked for the University of Birmingham, United Kingdom and involved in numerous research projects including one of the largest EU funded projects titled, “SWITCH-Managing Water for the Cities of the Future”.

With a passion of building sustainable communities, Dr. Tsegaye focuses his research efforts among Resilient and Smart Cities Strategies. Specifically, integrated urban water management, productive water use (recuse/recycling, energy/nutrient recovery from wastewater), appropriate technologies for sustainable water management, climate-land-energy-water (integrated analysis); GIS for sustainable development; water sensitive urban design, dynamic systems modeling for sustainability, water-energy-food nexus, agent based modeling for demand-side water management strategies, decentralized water supply and sanitation, climate change impacts on water resources, and transitioning from gray to green infrastructure systems.

Dr. Tsegaye’s latest major projects are focused on an Integrated Urban Water Management (funded by the Global Water Partnership), and a Decision Support Tool for Transitioning to Vegetation-based Stormwater Management (funded by US Forest Services). The latter project is focused on developing a GIS-based planning tool and communication platform designed to facilitate conversation between different discipline—showing both technical and non-technical users how Low Impact Development (LID) can work within the urban areas. Dr. Tsegaye led an interdisciplinary research team of 15 members, and managed the development of the tools, frameworks and guidelines that will be used to equip the future leaders for sustainability. Over the years, Dr. Tsegaye showed a successful track record in directing applied R&D, curriculum development for undergraduate and graduate programs (online and in-class), and building strong collaboration with international organizations such as the Global Water Partnership, African Water Facility, US Forest Service, UN-Habitat and the World Bank.