Marc Edwards
Marc Edwards is the Charles Lunsford professor of civil engineering at Virginia Tech, where he researches practically important but underfunded topics such as corrosion in buildings and opportunistic premise-plumbing pathogens. His work laid the groundwork for investigative science uncovering the 2001-2004 Washington D.C. lead crisis and the 2014-2016 Flint water disaster.
Time Magazine dubbed Edwards “The Plumbing Professor” in 2004, and listed him amongst the four most important “Innovators” in water from around the world. The White House awarded him a Presidential Faculty Fellowship in 1996. In 2013, Edwards was the ninth recipient (in a quarter century) of the IEEE Barus Award for “courageously defending the public interest at great personal risk,” and in 2016 he was named amongst the most influential people in the world by Fortune and Time magazine.