Associate professor Megan Konar has been awarded the 2022 Walter L. Huber Civil Engineering Research Prize by the American Society of Civil Engineers for “research contributions to the interconnected infrastructure systems that support the water-food nexus, including policy relevant research on the role of food supply chains in the sustainability, security and resilience of global water resources.”
Konar has been on the CEE at Illinois faculty since 2013, where she is the William J. and Elaine F. Hall Faculty Fellow. Her research draws from hydrology, environmental science and economics, and focuses on the intersection of water, food and trade. In particular, her research group seeks to understand how food supply chains impact water use and sustainability, and the exposure of agri-food supply chains to water risk.
Earlier this year, Konar received a 2022 Dean’s Award for Excellence in Research and, in 2020, the Campus Distinguished Promotion Award. Other recent honors include the American Geophysical Union’s Hydrologic Science Early Career Award and a National Science Foundation CAREER Award.
The award will be presented to Konar at ASCE’s Annual Convention in Anaheim, Calif., in October.