Biographical Sketch

Mr. Wayne W. Sharp, P.E. is a Senior Instructor in the Department of Civil Engineering and a Research Design Engineer at the Energy Institute of Louisiana (EIL) within the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. He holds an M.S. in Civil Engineering from Mississippi State University and a B.S. in Civil Engineering from the University of Kentucky. Mr. Sharp is a registered Professional Engineer in Kentucky and holds a long-standing commitment to municipal, industrial, and academic engineering systems.

With an extensive professional career spanning both industrial practice and academic leadership, Mr. Sharp brings decades of practical design experience to the university. His non-academic background features nearly twenty years as the Owner of Sharp Engineering, Inc., serving as a Project Manager for Howard K. Bell Consulting Engineers, Inc., and operating as a Principal Investigator for the US Army Engineer Waterways Experiment Station (currently ERDC). Since joining UL Lafayette in 2016, his combined background has driven collaborative technical efforts spanning industrial optimization, process design, and infrastructure management.

Mr. Sharp is a highly decorated educator, consistently recognized for his outstanding contributions to student guidance and professionalism. He has been named the UL College of Engineering Student Outreach Faculty Member of the Year multiple times, the Louisiana Section ASCE Educator of the Year, and has received the prestigious Engineering Faculty Professionalism Award from the Louisiana Engineering Foundation. Additionally, he serves as the active Faculty Advisor for both the UL Lafayette ASCE Student Chapter and the Chi Epsilon Student Chapter. His research contributions appear in numerous peer-reviewed journals and technical reports detailing environmental modeling, pump efficiency, and regional product optimization.

Recent Projects

• Water and Wastewater Treatment Design: Evaluating anaerobic digestion kinetic models and utilizing neural network regression modeling on spectral reflectance to quantify critical wastewater characteristic parameters.

• Carbon Outlook Planning: Developing technical and environmental initiatives aimed at enhancing the carbon dioxide sequestering capacity of Louisiana highway right-of-way lands.

• Value-Added Product Operations: Assessing production and commercialization opportunities for value-added co-products derived from regional Louisiana seafood processing waste sources.

• Bioregenerative Systems: Contributing to the design of simulated wastewater compositions and utilizing microalgae in bioregenerative life support systems for long-term space exploration and related environments.