Sharika U. S. Senarath, Ph.D., P.E., PMP, D.WRE, F.ASCE, a technical leader in the field of numerical modeling and contributor to the development, implementation, and application of many complex hydrologic models, has been named a Fellow by the ASCE Board of Direction.
Senarath currently serves as the director for flood peril at Berkshire Hathaway Specialty Insurance. He was previously senior principal scientist at the AIR Worldwide Corporation, and principal engineer at the South Florida Water Management District. He has also been an adjunct faculty member in the Department of Civil Engineering at Florida International University and affiliate associate graduate faculty member in the Department of Civil, Environmental and Geomatics Engineering at Florida Atlantic University.
He has served on many ASCE committees, on ASCE-EWRI task and awards committees, and on the Watershed Council. He is the present chair of ASCE-EWRI’s Surface Water Hydrology Technical Committee, having held the roles of secretary (2014-2016) and vice chair (2016-2018). Senarath also functioned as an officer in the Uncertainty Analysis Approaches in Hydrologic Modeling task committee. He is a Fellow of EWRI.
Senarath is an associate editor and editorial board member of the ASCE Journal of Hydrologic Engineering, and over the years has reviewed papers for many prestigious journals in the fields of water resources engineering and hydrology. Several of his own coauthored journal and conference papers, numerous and cutting-edge, have been widely cited in the engineering literature.
He served as the conference co-chair of the Eighth International Perspective on Water Resources and the Environment Conference, in Sri Lanka in 2016, a conference organized by ASCE’s Environmental and Water Resources Institute in cooperation with 10 other organizations. In addition, he has convened and chaired many conference sessions and actively served on several conference committees.
He has been inducted to several prestigious honor societies, such as the Sigma Xi (The Scientific Research Society), The Honor Society of Phi Kappa Phi, Chi Epsilon (The National Civil Engineering Honor Society), Tau Beta Pi (The Engineering Honor Society), and the Golden Key International Honour Society.
Senarath is a licensed professional engineer in the State of Florida as well as a certified professional hydrologist. He earned his bachelor’s degree (summa cum laude) from the University of Mississippi, a master’s degree from Colorado State University, and a Ph.D. from the University of Connecticut, all three degrees in civil engineering.
