Rate My Professor Megan Konar

Megan Konar is an Associate Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, a position she has held since her promotion in 2020, following her initial appointment as Assistant Professor in 2013. She earned a Ph.D. in Civil and Environmental Engineering from Princeton University in 2012 under advisor Ignacio Rodríguez-Iturbe, along with an M.S. from the same institution in 2009. Additionally, she holds an M.Sc. in Water Science, Policy, and Management from the University of Oxford in 2005 and a B.S. with honors in Conservation and Resource Studies from the University of California, Berkeley in 2002. Throughout her career, Konar has taken on leadership roles such as Director of the Center for Food Systems Security from 2020 to 2022 and Visiting Fellow at the School of Geography and the Environment, University of Oxford from 2022 to 2023. She teaches CEE 350 Water Resources Engineering and CEE 549 Globalization of Water, earning recognition on the List of Teachers Ranked as Excellent.

Konar's research centers on water resources sustainability, including groundwater depletion, virtual water trade networks, food supply chains, agri-food infrastructure resilience, and food flows. Her interests explicitly include groundwater, networks, food flows, food supply chains, and water footprints. She has garnered major awards such as the 2024 American Geophysical Union James B. Macelwane Medal and Fellowship, the 2022 American Society of Civil Engineers Walter L. Huber Civil Engineering Research Prize, the 2022 Dean’s Award for Excellence in Research from the Grainger College of Engineering, the 2020 Campus Distinguished Promotion Award, the 2019 NSF CAREER Award, and the 2019 AGU Hydrologic Sciences Section Early Career Award. Key publications include "Evolution of the global virtual water trade network" (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2012), "Water for food: The global virtual water trade network" (Water Resources Research, 2011), "Virtual groundwater transfers from overexploited aquifers in the United States" (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2015), "A network analysis of food flows within the United States of America" (Environmental Science & Technology, 2014), and "Structural chokepoints determine the resilience of agri-food supply chains in the United States" (Nature Food, 2023). Konar serves as Associate Editor for Water Resources Research, chairs graduate admissions for Water Resources Engineering & Science, and contributes to various departmental committees. Her scholarship has advanced socio-hydrology and sustainable food-water systems.