Dr. Doug Call is an Associate Professor in the Department of Civil, Construction, and Environmental Engineering at NC State. Dr. Call’s research group is interested in environmental technologies that provide a broad range of benefits, including contaminant removal, resource recovery from wastes (solid and liquid), and resource generation. His group focuses heavily on biological and electrochemical principles. Examples of current research activities include (1) understanding the electrosorption of inorganic (e.g., salt) and organic ions (e.g., volatile fatty acids) onto capacitive electrodes, (2) studying the regulatory response of microbial cells to electrical driving forces that promote ammonium generation from nitrogen gas, (3) determining operational drivers that shift anaerobic digestion away from methane production and towards carboxylate generation and extension, and (4) elucidating the dynamics of microbial communities that can be used to generate microbial-based products (e.g., fertilizers, protein). Dr. Call has collaborated with STEPS researchers Jones, Knappe, Duckworth, and Grieger to study the mechanisms of phosphate removal using a variety of metal sorbents, with particular focus on lanthanum-containing materials.

Dr. Call received a BS in Environmental Sciences from the University of Virginia (2003) and a BS in Civil Engineering from Virginia Tech (2005). He then obtained his MS (2008) and PhD (2011) in Environmental Engineering from Penn State University. He continued as a postdoctoral scientist at Penn State until becoming an Assistant Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Syracuse University in 2012. He joined NC State in 2014. He teaches the undergraduate courses CE 373 Fundamentals of Environmental Engineering and CE 378 Environmental Chemistry and Microbiology, and the graduate course CE 573 Biological Principles of Environmental Engineering at NC State. Recent awards include the (1) National Science Foundation CAREER Award (2020), (2) NC State Gertrude Cox Award for Innovative Excellence in Teaching and Learning with Technology (2019), and (3) Outstanding Young Alumni Award – Virginia Tech (2019).