Bio and Research:
Dr. Medina earned a Ph.D. degree in water resources and environmental engineering sciences from the University of Florida in 1976 and joined the Duke faculty thereafter. Dr. Medina is Director of the International Honors Program of the School of Engineering and Co-Director of the School's joint master's degree program with the Fuqua School of Business. He has been a registered Professional Hydrologist, American Institute of Hydrology (Minnesota), since 1983. Professor Medina has conducted funded research in hydrologic and water quality mathematical modeling for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the National Science Foundation, the Office of Water Research and Technology, the North Carolina Water Resources Research Institute, the State of North Carolina, and the U.S. Air Force. His current research focuses on integrating contaminant transport prediction models within a decision-analysis framework for risk assessment. The results of his research are reported in such journals as Water Resources Research, Journal of Contaminant Hydrology, Hydrosoft, Advances in Water Resources, Ground Water, Applied Mathematics and Computation, Journal of the American Water Resources Association, Computing in Civil Engineering, Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management, Journal of Environmental Engineering, Hydrological Science and Technology, and Environmental Health Perspectives. He was selected a Fulbright Scholar for 1984 at Monash University, Melbourne, Australia. He conducted post-graduate intensive courses on urban hydrology for UNESCO in Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, the Dominican Republic, and Panama in 1985 and 1986. In 1987, he was awarded an NSF travel grant to establish links between U.S. and Argentine hydrologists and water professionals. He was named External Evaluator of the UNESCO International Hydrological Programme from 2002 to 2003. Professor Medina is a former President of the Universities Council on Water Resources, Inc., and the North Carolina Section of the American Water Resources Association. He is a consultant to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the World Health Organization, the Research Triangle Institute of North Carolina, the Inter-American Development Bank, the Pan American Health Organization, the Ministries of Water Resources in Venezuela and Spain, the Technical Advisory Service for Attorneys, and other private enterprises. He is Chairman of the International Technical Advisory Committee of the International Ground Water Modeling Center (Colorado School of Mines, and Delft, The Netherlands). In 1989, the Governor of North Carolina appointed Dr. Medina to the Environmental Management Commission.