Dr. Powell received his BSc and MSc in the USA and Ph.D. in Canada (Geology-Geochemistry). His main interests include the soil-plant-water nexus, non-traditional methods of soil remineralization and solid fossil fuel utilization. Most of his career has mingled the public, private and civil society sectors through multicultural, multinational, and multidisciplinary research/projects. He has co-authored over 80 publications, 5 book chapters, 50 conference proceedings, and 1000’s of pages of government and private sector reports.
During the academic part of his career, he designed and implemented numerous international projects with budgets in excess of 1.5 million dollars/annum; the majority of his work has emphasized the importance of using natural sciences results to benefit society. As an international consultant, he worked mainly on degraded soil restoration and reforestation in India and developing new technologies for soil remineralization using “waste” materials (India, China, Colombia, Ecuador).
He acted as a consultant to the Dept. of Science, Technology and Higher Education in Ecuador from 2014-2017 with the objective of strengthening the country’s research capacity: conducted over 60 workshops to more than 2,500 persons in academia and public sector research organizations; reviewed and evaluated the research infrastructure and capacity at most of the country’s major universities; developed research plans for government research organizations, and evaluated all research funding applications.