Technology News - November 10, 2004

National Academy of Engineering taps Rittmann

Bruce E. Rittmann, the John Evans Professor of Civil Engineering at Northwestern University and a member of ES&T’s Editorial Advisory Board, was inducted into the U.S. National Academy of Engineering (NAE) last month. Rittmann was elected for “pioneering the development of biofilm fundamentals and contributing to their widespread use in the cleanup of contaminated waters, soils, and ecosystems.”

“When I practice environmental biotechnology, I use communities of microorganisms to help human society interact positively with the environment,” Rittmann says. “The microbial communities are able to recover valuable resources from materials society otherwise views as wastes. The valuable resources can include the water itself, energy, or minerals. Environmental biotechnology will be essential as society becomes more sustainable in the future.”

Rittmann was the first recipient of the Athalie Richardson Irvine Clarke Prize for Outstanding Achievements in Water Science and Technology from the National Water Research Institute. He has published more than 300 books, chapters, and journal papers, and the Institute for Scientific Information lists him as a highly cited author. He co-wrote Environmental Biotechnology: Principles and Applications, a 2001 textbook that has been translated into Chinese, Korean, and Japanese.

The NAE honors engineers who have made “important contributions to engineering theory and practice, including significant contributions to the literature” and researchers who have played key roles in expanding engineering’s purview.