Praveen Kumar, the Colonel Harry F. and Frankie M. Lovell Endowed Professor in Civil and Environmental Engineering, has been named the Executive Director of the Prairie Research Institute at the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign. Kumar, an expert in hydrology and a seasoned research leader, will lead the institute starting June 16, pending the approval of the Board of Trustees. Kumar studies the complex interactions between the water cycle, climate change, vegetation, and surface and sub-surface transport of water and chemicals in human-dominated and natural systems. With affiliate appointments in the Department of Atmospheric Sciences; the National Center for Supercomputing Applications; the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology; and the Institute for Sustainability, Energy, and Environment, he brings broad interdisciplinary perspectives to the position.