Robert De Otte
Dr. Robert DeOtte is a retired professor of civil and environmental engineering. He retired from West Texas A&M University after a career with the TAMU System that spanned 38 years including a research appointment with the Texas Engineering Experiment Station, and teaching at three System universities. During his time at WTAMU he had an adjunct appointment with the Department of Biological and Agricultural Engineer at Texas A&M University. His collaborators at BAEN included Drs. Brent Auvermann, Ken Casey, and John Sweeten.
Dr. DeOtte’s research has run the gamut from measuring fluid flow fields in orifice meters, turbomachinery, and aerosol collection devices; groundwater availability; protocols for evaluating aerosol samplers to detect threat agents; and most recently livestock mortality issues.
In 2010 Drs. DeOtte, Auvermann, and Casey received an NSF Major Research Instrumentation grant directed at air quality research. Dr. DeOtte coupled the particle imaging velocimeter (PIV) and associated instrumentation with his dispersion wind tunnel while Drs. Casey and Auvermann use meteorological towers and instrumentation for field measurements in feedyards and dairies. Drs. Casey and DeOtte have collaborated on several water conservation projects funded by the USDA ARS Ogallala Aquifer Project. They have endeavored to measure biologic activity in retention pond waters at feedyards and work with a new faculty member at West Texas A&M University, to attempt to remove nutrients from the runoff at feed yards.
Dr. DeOtte has had significant experience working with the livestock industries on developing responses to highly contagious diseases of beef cattle, dairy cattle, and swine. His work has been funded from the Department of Homeland Security and USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service cooperative agreements and grants. He and his students have inventoried all the feedyards and landfills in the five state area of Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, Kansas, and Oklahoma. As a result of that study, planners now know that there is not sufficient rendering and landfill capacity to dispose of all the carcasses that would be generated if the United States responded to a foot-and-mouth disease outbreak by trying to euthanize all the infected and exposed animals. As a consequence USDA is revising their response strategies. Along those lines Dr. DeOtte and Dr. Tim Goldsmith, a veterinarian at the University of Minnesota, have worked with meat packers to engage them in response to infectious animal diseases.