Vijay Sundaram, P.E.

Research and Design Engineer

With reliable water resources becoming scarce and water quality requirements becoming increasingly restrictive, Vijay has focused his research and professional engineering careers on developing for full-scale implementation, cost effective technologies removing refractory contaminants from water, particularly municipal and industrial wastewaters. His work with refractory contaminants has included the over 300 constituents of concern to the State of California for water reuse projects. This extensive list includes endocrine disrupting compounds (EDCs), pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs), carcinogens, and very difficult to remove compounds such as flame retardants. In addition to investigating individual contaminants, Vijay also assesses the potential synergistic activity of these contaminants (a very real concern of the general public) by use of special bioassays such as E-screen estrogenic activity bioassays and COMET mutagenicity assays.

Though a professional civil engineer, Vijay’s undergraduate training is in chemical engineering. This training and perspective are particularly useful in the development of cost effective advanced treatment designs and control strategies because most advanced treatment processes are more akin to chemical engineering than to traditional civil engineering.

His most recent major advanced treatment project has been the development, design, and operational oversight of a multi-year, continuous operation, advanced treatment demonstration project for the City of Reno at its Reno-Stead Water Reclamation Facility. When not practicing engineering, Vijay enjoys traveling in the western United States with his wife Charu. Favorite locations include rivers and waterfalls.