John Briscoe to receive 2012 Stroud Award for Freshwater Excellence

Cambridge, Mass. - September 13, 2012 - John Briscoe, Gordon McKay Professor of the Practice of Environmental Engineering and Environmental Health at Harvard University, has been selected to receive the 2012 Stroud Award for Freshwater Excellence.

Awarded by the Stroud Water Research Center, an independent, non-profit research institute, the prize celebrates "outstanding contributions" to the field of freshwater conservation, protection, and stewardship.

Briscoe is an expert on international water security. While holding faculty positions at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and the Harvard School of Public Health, as well as an adjunct position at the Harvard Kennedy School, he is the director of the Harvard Water Security Initiative. He is also a faculty associate of the Harvard University Center for the Environment.

Briscoe earned his bachelor's degree in civil engineering in 1969 at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. Continuing his studies in environmental engineering at Harvard, he earned the Ph.D. in 1976.

In the early years of his career, he served as an epidemiologist studying cholera in Bangladesh; served as an advisor to Oxfam; and was employed as a water engineer for the National Directorate of Water in Mozambique.

From 1986 to 2008, Briscoe worked at the World Bank, rising to positions including Chief of the Water and Sanitation Division, Senior Water Advisor, and then Country Director for Brazil. He is credited with managing a $40 billion portfolio of water-related projects for the World Bank.

Briscoe joined Harvard in 2009, and his research continues to explore a range of issues in environmental engineering, economic development, resource management, and environmental policy. His teaching and research efforts were recently profiled in Harvard Magazine, which dubbed him "the water tamer."

The Stroud Award will be presented at a gala in Pennsylvania on October 18.

About the Stroud Water Research Center

The Stroud Water Research Center seeks to advance knowledge and stewardship of fresh water through research, education and global outreach and to help businesses, landowners, policy makers and individuals make informed decisions that affect the quality and availability of fresh water around the world.

The Center and the Christina watershed were recently designated one of only six “Critical Zone Observatories” in the USA by the National Science Foundation. Research projects include some of the largest rivers in the world (Amazon, Congo, Fly, Mississippi), hundreds of streams in the mid-Atlantic region, and issues such as regulating nutrient and thermal pollution, freshwater wetland protection, and toxicity testing and expert testimony related to mountain top mining and Marcellus Shale drilling. The Stroud Water Research Center is an independent, 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization.