Amy E. Childress, PhD, is Dean’s Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Director of the ReWater Center (Center for Water Reuse and Resource Recovery) at the University of Southern California. She is also Academic Lead for the Water Reuse Consortium, a partnership of three universities and the US Army Corps of Engineers ERDC-CERL.  

 

Her research interests are wastewater reuse and desalination to address freshwater scarcity. She has investigated innovative membrane processes for contaminant and energy challenges; conceptual analyses of synergistic configurations in shared/integrated facilities; interfacial and mechanical aspects of membrane materials; and brine reduction and energy recovery.

 

Childress received the 2024 Clarke Prize for Outstanding Achievement in Water Science and Technology; she is past president of AEESP; is a Fullbright US Scholar, and recently stepped down from the US EPA Science Advisory Board. She chairs and serves on multiple NWRI expert panels.

 

She has a BS degree in Civil Engineering from the University of Maryland, and MS and PhD degrees from the University of California, Los Angeles.