Stanford Engineering Professor Richard Luthy receives distinguished environmental engineering award

American Academy of Environmental Engineers & Scientists recognizes Luthy's contributions to the field of environmental engineering and dedication to improving the quality of the world’s environment.

Richard Luthy, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford, has received the Gordon Maskew Fair Award for 2015 from the American Academy of Environmental Engineers & Scientists. The award recognizes his substantial contributions to the field of environmental engineering and his dedication to improving the quality of the world’s environment.

Luthy is the Silas H. Palmer professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford, a Senior Fellow in the Woods Institute for the Environment and a member of the National Academy of Engineers. His research focuses on water quality and has applications to the urban water infrastructure and creating sustainable solutions to water challenges faced by cities. He is the director of the National Science Foundation-sponsored Engineering Research Center for Re-inventing the Nation’s Urban Water Infrastructure (ReNUWIt). It develops water strategies for urban settings, focusing especially on regions with prolonged water shortages such as the western and southwestern United States.

Luthy received his PhD in civil engineering with a focus on environmental engineering from the University of California, Berkeley in 1976. He spent more than 20 years as a professor in the department of civil and environmental engineering at Carnegie Mellon University before joining the faculty at Stanford in 2000. Luthy served as chair of the department of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford from 2003 to 2009. In 2005 he was named a senior fellow of the Woods Institute for the Environment, an interdisciplinary research center at Stanford studying sustainable ways for societies to provide adequate food and water worldwide.

Luthy has received numerous awards and recognitions, including the Cleanup Project of the Year from the U.S. Department of Defense, the Jack Edward McKee Medal from the Water Environment Federation, the John Henske Distinguished Lecture at Yale University and election as the Einstein Professor of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. His PhD thesis has also received four separate awards. He is currently the chair of the National Research Council Committee on Beneficial Use of Stormwater and Graywater, and previously served as the chair of the National Research Council's Water Science and Technology Board and as president of the Association of Environmental Engineering and Science Professors.

He will be honored at an award luncheon April 23 at the National Press Club in Washington. This marks the second year in a row that a Stanford professor has won the award.

Last modified Thu, 11 Dec, 2014 at 16:58