Linda Abriola, professor in the Departments of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Chemical and Biological Engineering, and former dean of the School of Engineering at Tufts, was recently named a Science Envoy by the U.S. State Department. Her responsibilities will be to develop partnerships, improve collaboration, and forge mutually beneficial relationships related to science and economic issues between other nations and the United States. There will be a focus on STEM education and engineering in the Middle East, North Africa, and South and Central Asia.

In addition, Abriola will become the director of the Tufts Institute of the Environment (TIE) starting September 2016. In her new position, she will serve to support interdisciplinary environmental research and education for faculty and undergraduate and graduate students. Founded in 1998, TIE is home to programs such as the interdisciplinary graduate level Water: Systems, Science and Society.

Abriola is also the principal investigator in the Integrated Multiphase Environmental Systems Laboratory at Tufts. Her research is on groundwater contamination and remediation. She was one of the first to develop a mathematical model that describes how organic chemical pollutants travel within and contaminate groundwater. In 2015, Abiola was named a University Professor, one of five at Tufts to earn this distinction. Prior to Tufts, Abriola was at the University of Michigan. She earned her Ph.D. in civil engineering from Princeton in 1983.