Glenn Moglen, a professor in the Charles E. Via, Jr. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering in the College of Engineering at Virginia Tech, has been named director of the Occoquan Watershed Monitoring Laboratory in Manassas, Virginia.

Moglen succeeds recently retired Professor Emeritus Tom Grizzard who headed the laboratory throughout his 40-year career at Virginia Tech.

Researchers and students associated with the laboratory make determinations in a number of areas critical to the ongoing management of water quality in the Occoquan watershed situated on the southwestern periphery of the Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C. 

The basin encompasses six political subdivisions which include portions of four counties and the entire land area of two independent cities.

Research projects at the Occoquan Watershed Monitoring Laboratory are conducted by both Virginia Tech faculty and investigators from other research universities and public agencies located in Virginia and elsewhere.

Moglen joined the Virginia Tech community in 2008 and has served as the program director for the civil and environmental engineering program in the National Capital Region. 

He teaches courses in hydrology, advanced hydrology, advanced open channel flow, and urban hydrology and stormwater management.

Moglen has spent many years studying the issue of limiting impervious surfaces such as pavements that act as impenetrable materials to water. He has called for planners "to allow a safety margin when regulating land based on imperviousness, to steer development to already urbanized locations and away from relatively undisturbed locations, and to take advantage of situations that mitigate the deleterious effects of imperviousness on stream ecology." 

More recently, Moglen has investigated vulnerabilities of existing stormwater infrastructure and future infrastructure design methods to evolving precipitation dynamics from climate change. 

The United States Environmental Protection Agency, the Maryland State Highway Association, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency are among the organizations who have engaged Moglen for his  expertise. 

Moglen received his Ph.D. in civil engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a master's degree from Colorado State University, and a bachelor's degree from the University of Maryland. He is registered professional engineer. 

From 2003 to 2004, Moglen was at the Office of Surface Water at the U.S. Geological Survey in Reston, Virginia. He also was a visiting research scientist at the National Weather Service, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, in Silver Spring, Maryland, from 1995 to 1996.

 

 

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