UA Engineering Professor Appointed State EPSCoR Director

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — Dr. Robert Griffin, associate dean for research in The University of Alabama College of Engineering, has been appointed state director of the Alabama Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR).

The program, which brings more than $12 million in research to Alabama annually, is now operated from UA’s Office for Sponsored Engineering Programs. EPSCoR’s programs represent a partnership between federal and state agencies and industry and are designed to enhance the state’s capabilities in science and engineering research, education and technology.

Griffin, who is also the J.R. Cudworth Professor of Environmental Engineering at UA, joined the University’s chemical engineering faculty in 1990 and obtained a joint appointment with its civil and environmental engineering department in 1992. He has published extensively on the fate and transport of pollutants in the environment.

Griffin was selected in 1991 as the associate director for Alabama’s EPA-EPSCoR and, since 1996, had served as the state’s co-director of EPSCoR.

The state’s EPSCoR institutions include UA, Alabama A&M University, Auburn University, UAB, the University of Alabama in Huntsville, the University of South Alabama and Tuskegee University.

In 1837, The University of Alabama became the first university in the state to offer engineering classes and was one of the first five in the nation to do so. Today, the College of Engineering has about 1,800 students and more than 90 faculty. It has been fully accredited since accreditation standards were implemented in the 1930s.