John Albertson

John Albertson is a Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Cornell University, where he joined the faculty in July 2015 as the David Croll Fellow Professor, arriving from Duke University, where he had served as Chair of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering since 2002. Prior to Duke, he was a faculty member in the Department of Environmental Sciences at the University of Virginia beginning in 1996. Albertson earned his B.S. in Civil Engineering with an emphasis in structures from the State University of New York at Buffalo in 1985. Following graduation, he worked for six years as a professional structural engineer in the electric power industry, during which time he obtained an M.B.A. in Finance from the University of Hartford and a Professional Engineer's license in Connecticut. In 1991, he returned to academia, receiving an M.E.S. in Hydrology from Yale University in 1993 and a Ph.D. in Hydrologic Science from the University of California, Davis in 1996. He has held visiting appointments at the University of Cork in Ireland, the University of Cagliari and University of Padova in Italy, and EURAC in Italy.

Albertson's research is directed toward developing a comprehensive understanding of the exchange rates of mass such as water, CO2, and pollutants, energy, and momentum between the land surface and atmosphere, with primary applications in hydrometeorology and air quality. His work emphasizes the fusion of measurements and models for optimal prediction and spans environmental fluid mechanics, hydrology, computational fluid dynamics, heat and mass transfer, remote sensing, scientific computing, sensors, signal and image processing, sustainable energy systems, and water systems. Notable awards include the Natural Resource Institute Outside Collaborator of the Year Award from USDA-ARS in 2000, the New Investigator Program in the Earth Sciences Award from NASA in 1999, the Hydrology Section Outstanding Student Paper Award from the American Geophysical Union in 1996, and the Northeast Utilities Chairman's Award for Outstanding Performance in 1989. Key publications include "Investigating Long-Range Seasonal Predictability of East African Short Rains: Influence of the Mascarene High on the Indian Ocean Walker Cell" (Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology, 2020), "Estimation of methane emissions from the U.S. ammonia fertilizer industry using a mobile sensing approach" (Elementa: Science of the Anthropocene, 2019), "Mobile sensing of point-source gas emissions using Bayesian inference: An empirical examination of the likelihood function" (Atmospheric Environment, 2019), "A probabilistic description of entrainment instability for cloud-topped boundary-layer models" (Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society, 2017), and "A Mobile Sensing Approach for Regional Surveillance of Fugitive Methane Emissions in Oil and Gas Production" (Environmental Science & Technology, 2016).

Professional Email: albertson@cornell.edu