Daniel Oerther

Daniel B. Oerther, PhD, PE, BCEE is the John A. and Susan Mathes Chair of Environmental Engineering at the Missouri University of Science and Technology.  Previously, Dan was on the faculty of the University of Cincinnati where he was most recently Head of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Founding Director of the Ohio Center for Excellence in Sustaining the Urban Environment.  At S&T, Dan serves as the faculty-advisor to the student chapter of IDSA.  He is an advocate of design thinking, and a proponent of social entrepreneurship.  Dan’s areas of practice as a Professional Engineer include sewage treatment, drinking water treatment, bioremediation, and public health microbiology.

Dan’s three major professional goals include ensuring universal access to clean water and sanitation, combating the obesity epidemic in the USA and abroad, and eliminating relative extreme poverty ($1.25/day globally and minimum wage in the USA).

Dan earned his BA in biology and his BS in environmental engineering from Northwestern University, and his MS and PhD in environmental engineering from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.  He’s completed predoctoral training at the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology, Bremen, Germany and postgraduate certificates in microbial ecology from the Marine Biology Lab, public health from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School, and public administration from the Indiana University School of Public and Environmental Affairs.  Dan’s major awards include the NSF CAREER, a Fellowship from the Office of Naval Research, the Fulbright-Nehru Visiting Scholar, the Fulbright-Pai Endowed Professorship, being named an inaugural Fellow of the Institute for Public Health and Water Research, the Excellence in Environmental Engineering Honor Award from the Academy of Environmental Engineers, the National Research Prize for Creative Integration of Practice and Education in the Academy from NCARB, and Honorary Lifetime Membership in Sigma Theta Tau International Honor Society of Nursing.