Dr. Cully Hession is a founding member of AEES (1999) and has worked over 25 years to support and grow the society. His service to the organization includes a term as President (2009-2010), Vice President (2008-2009), conference organizer or co-organizer three times (2002, 2008, 2024), a member of the Certified Ecological Designer committee, and AEES journal task force member (2020-2022). He became an AEES Fellow in 2024, was one of the initial AEES certified ecological designers, and is a registered professional engineer in Virginia.

Cully received his BS and MS in Agricultural Engineering at Virginia Tech a long time ago. After that he conducted research at a USDA research laboratory in Minnesota and worked at a state agency in Virginia before going back for his PhD in Biosystems Engineering at Oklahoma State University.

After his PhD he focused on aquatic ecosystem research at the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia as the only engineer among more than 40 aquatic ecologists.  He then became a professor of Civil & Environmental Engineering at the University of Vermont, then finally back to his old department (now called Biological Systems Engineering) at Virginia Tech where he teaches a range of classes including the 2-semester senior design experience.

Dr. Hession has significantly contributed  to  the  profession by mentoring 35 ecological engineering graduate students (14 PhD and 21 MS) as well as two post-doctoral scientists, advising more than 63 undergraduate researchers, serving as PI on a USDA-REEU and two NSF-REUs, and advancing our knowledge with more than 75 peer-reviewed manuscripts. He has led numerous grants from USEPA, NSF, USDA, and state and private sources. Internationally he has worked in Mongolia, Germany, China, Taiwan, and Puerto Rico.

​Cully’s research focuses on “making streams happy.”  He specifically explores the interaction between streams and floodplains, techniques for measuring and improving instream habitat, and the influence of humans on small streams. His research in the mid-Atlantic US clearly documented the scale-dependent effects of riparian vegetation on channel morphology and the implications for aquatic ecosystems and stream restoration practice. More recently, Cully’s work has focused on the use of drone-based lidar to quantify spatial and temporal variability in floodplain vegetation and channel change over time. Dr. Hession is director of the Virginia Tech StREAM Lab, a unique outdoor laboratory downstream from campus. The facility and its long-term dataset has been utilized by at least 20 classes and more than 20 graduate students for their research.