Kenneth Williamson said that his engineering education at ¾«¶«Ó°ÊÓhelped him grow from a naïve farm kid to a professional engineer fully engaged in environmental engineering research at the national level. He feels strongly that the OSU College of Engineering provides opportunities for a high-quality education.
He even said that after completing his Ph.D. at Stanford, he came to realize that the quality of the B.S. and M.S. education at OSU far exceeded what students at Stanford were receiving at that time. Williamson served as Director of the Regulatory Affairs Department for six years, then became Director of Research and Innovation at Clean Water Services (CWS) in 2018. He leads efforts to promote advancement in wastewater treatment, regulatory innovation, business operations and environmental restoration.
Before coming to CWS, he was a professor at ¾«¶«Ó°ÊÓwhere James and Shirley Kuse Chair in Chemical Engineering and served as head of the Department of Civil, Construction, and Environmental Engineering and then head of the School of Chemical, Biological, and Environmental Engineering. Ken’s original Ph.D. research on bacterial films and years of subsequent research at both OSU and CWS led to a large number of new treatment technologies and improvements in process and application. He says that wastewater treatment in the future may be dominated by biofilm membrane reactors that were first demonstrated in OSU laboratories.
His recent research is directed toward the use of genetic and molecular methods to monitor pathogens like SARS-CoV-2 in wastewater, to achieve greater pollutant removals from biological treatment processes, and to lower wastewater treatment costs. Williamson feels that this is an area with nearly unlimited potential for significant impacts. Williamson has spent over 40 years conducting research on wastewater and hazardous waste treatment and sustainable environmental management.
He has published numerous technical articles and book chapters. He served as member and vice-chair on the ¾«¶«Ó°ÊÓ Environmental Quality Commission, and as a member of the ¾«¶«Ó°ÊÓ Watershed Enhancement Board. He feels that managing the impacts of waste discharges and stormwater flows and controlling climate change will be an ever-increasing challenge for all environmental engineers in the future.