AEES Fellows Program
The American Ecological Engineering Society bestows Fellow election to members with exemplary qualifications and sustained excellence in contributions to the practice, research, or education in the field of Ecological Engineering. Fellows are leaders in their discipline and accomplished members of our society, have dedicated substantial effort and resources towards the betterment of the discipline, and demonstrate evidence that they will make a positive contribution for the society in their role as a Fellow.
Dr. Stephanie Lansing
Professor University of Maryland
AEES President, 2022-2023
Class of 2026
Dr. Stephanie Lansing is a Professor in the Department of Environmental Science & Technology at University of Maryland. She was AEES President from 2022-2023, hosted the 2022 Annual AEES meeting in Baltimore, and is a proud Lifetime AEES member. Stephanie attended her first AEES conference over 20 years ago as an undergraduate student at University of Oklahoma, presenting a poster on constructed wetlands for acid mine drainage with Dr. Bob Nairn. She served as an environmental educator with Peace Corps-Belize (2000-2002) before starting graduate school in Food, Agriculture, and Biological Engineering at the Ohio State University under the direction of Dr. Jay Martin. During her PhD, she received a NSF Fellowship to study small-scale anaerobic digestion systems in Costa Rica.
Stephanie Lansing joined the faculty at the University of Maryland in 2008, where she leads the Bioenergy and Biotechnology Laboratory and manages > $20 million in federally-funded grants on food system resiliency, anaerobic digestion, fermentation, microbial fuel cells (MFCs), life cycle assessments, and strengthening the circular bioeconomy. She serves as the Co-Chair of the Maryland Food System Resiliency Council, spearheading this five-year, multiagency collaborative effort to engage experts in addressing food insecurity and improving food system resiliency.
Stephanie leads a $5 million NSF grant, NourishNet, which works to put healthy food in the hands of the food insecure while reducing food waste. Her awards from the Department of Energy, totaling $6 million, focus on biofuels and bioplastics creation from food waste and characterizing waste across US landfills, schools, restaurants, and groceries. She leads a $7.8 million DARPA grant to transform microscopic marine organic matter to bioenergy using underwater MFC technology. Finally, Stephanie leads the animal waste technology Extension team in creating accessible Fact Sheets and outreach programming on digestion, composting, gasification, and community input for siting waste technologies.