Brian A. Powell has been selected to be faculty representative to the Board of Trustees. He replaces Joe Ryan, who completed his three-year term.
Powell holds the Fjeld Professorship in Nuclear Environmental Engineering and Science and is jointly appointed in the Department of Environmental Engineering and Earth Sciences and the Department of Chemistry. He is also a joint appointee at the Savannah River National Laboratory with the objective of building research collaborations between Clemson and SRNL.
In his new role, Powell is the official representative of the faculty to the board, gathering information from faculty and consulting with the Faculty Senate on board-related matters. He will present reports to the board’s Educational Policy Committee and at the full board meeting.
Powell said he seeks to highlight the need to balance faculty teaching and service loads with research expectations as Clemson grows in prominence as an R1 university and embarks on the update of the ClemsonForward strategic plan.
Powell’s research focuses on understanding and prediction of the physical, chemical and biological processes that govern the mobility of heavy metals and radionuclides in natural and engineered systems.
He has a Bachelor of Science degree in chemistry from the University of Montevallo (1999) and Master of Science and doctoral degrees in Environmental Engineering and Science from Clemson University (2001, 2004). He returned to Clemson as an assistant professor in 2008 and was promoted to associate professor in 2013 and full professor in 2016.
Powell has received multiple awards during his distinguished career, including the 2021 College of Engineering, Computing, and Applied Science Researcher of the Year; 2018 Inaugural Clemson University Research, Scholarship, and Academic Achievement Award; 2018 McQueen Quattlebaum Award in CECAS; the Governor’s Young Researcher Award for Excellence in Scientific Research; and Department of Energy Early Career Research Award
His research projects have received more than $20.4 million in funding.