| 1 | Name: | Dr. Debra Niemeier | |
| Institution: | University of Maryland, College Park; University of California, Davis | ||
| Year Elected: | 2021 | ||
| Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | ||
| Subdivision: | 103. Engineering | ||
| Residency: | Resident | ||
| Living? : | Living | ||
| Birth Date: | 1959 | ||
Debra Niemeier is Clark Distinguished Chair in Sustainability and Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at University of Maryland, College Park as well as Professor Emerita of Civil and Environmental Engineering at University of California, Davis. She earned her Ph.D. from the University of Washington in 1994. Her work history also includes stints at the Texas Department of Highways, the City of San Marcos, T.Y. Lin International, and, at University of California, Davis, the Caltrans Air Quality Project, the John Muir Institute on the Environment, and Sustainable Design Academy. Deb Niemeier has done ground-breaking research in vehicle emissions, air quality, affordable housing, and infrastructure funding, spurring policy and regulatory change. She developed new methods to resolve vehicle emissions for better identification of environmental health disparities. Her work transformed federal guidance for public agencies by requiring that vulnerable populations be identified using her methods. Her research on the return to background pollutant concentrations at roadside edge resulted in a complete revision of current thinking about minimum acceptable distances from roadway edges for sensitive populations, motivating new international studies on air pollutant much further from roadway edges than was previously thought necessary. Through her Guggenheim Fellowship, she is establishing the first civil and environmental engineering pro bono clinic in which engineering students will collaborate with law students through legal aid and university law clinics to provide technical expertise to support disadvantaged communities. She is a member of the National Academy of Engineering (2017) and fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (2014). She was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 2021. | |||