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 the Academic Lead for the Water Reuse Consortium, a unique partnership between three universities and the US Army Corps of Engineers. 

 

Her research and scholarly interests focus on wastewater reuse and desalination to address the global challenge of freshwater scarcity. She researches membranes for innovative solutions to contaminant and energy challenges; conceptual analyses of synergistic configurations of shared/integrated facilities; interfacial and mechanical aspects of membrane materials; and brine reduction and energy recovery. Throughout her career, she has led multidisciplinary education and mentoring.  

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Childress received the 2024 Clarke Prize for Outstanding Achievement in Water Science and Technology. She is the past president of the Association of Environmental Engineering and Science Professors (AEESP), a Fulbright US Scholar, and recently stepped down from the US EPA Science Advisory Board.  

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Childress chairs and serves on multiple NWRI expert panels for potable reuse and seawater desalination projects and regularly speaks at technical conferences worldwide. She holds a BS in Civil Engineering from the University of Maryland and MS and PhD degrees from the University of California, Los Angeles.