Joshua Fu is the John D. Tickle Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering in the Tickle College of Engineering.
In the Tickle College of Engineering, Joshua Fu works to find solutions concerning human activity’s impact on air quality and public health.
His work has taken on increased significance in recent years as climate change and extreme weather events impact how humans live. Wildfires in the western United States, droughts in California, and other similar events all have a significant impact on human well-being.
Fu, who studies energy, climate change, air quality, and human health, makes a point to not only identify problems but also to provide policymakers with solutions.
“We have a concept of sciences for services,” Fu said. “We’re not only doing abstract research, but we’re making a product. We want to utilize our results for solutions to real world problems.”
As the John D. Tickle Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Fu seeks to get ahead of problems the world is anticipated to experience in the future.
“Climate change is having an impact throughout agricultural ecosystems, and we know that we are going to have food and water shortages,” Fu said. “That’s why we, as an international research community, have to work together.”
I appreciate Mr. Tickle’s generosity and want him to know that we strive to fulfill his expectations of the highest possible quality of work.
– Joshua Fu, John D. Tickle Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering in the Tickle College of Engineering
As climate patterns change, Fu says, the impacts of human activity on the environment can become more extreme and have unintended consequences. A small campfire or a discarded cigarette may not seem significant, but in the western United States they can easily cause millions of dollars in property damages and unmeasurable loss of natural resources.
“Sometimes it’s as simple as we, as humans, not paying attention,” Fu said. “These are problems for human health and prosperity, and we would like to explore the area where human activity interacts with the environment. We need to pay attention to these extreme, bifurcated climate patterns that that are abnormally hot and cold.”
Fu also sees his professorship as an opportunity to increase diversity in the field of engineering, in particular by recruiting female PhD students to the college. This is important, he says, because climate change is a topic which affects all humans and needs to be studied from an inclusive perspective.
“I’m honored to be the John D. Tickle professor,” Fu said. “I appreciate Mr. Tickle’s generosity and want him to know that we strive to fulfill his expectations of the highest possible quality of work.”
Fu is also the inaugural professor of the UT-ORNL Bredesen Center for Interdisciplinary Research and Graduate Education and was a faculty affiliate at the UT-ORNL Joint Institute for Computational Sciences. He holds a joint faculty appointment in the Computational Earth Sciences Group in the Computational Sciences and Engineering Division at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
