Michelle Soupir, professor in agricultural and biosystems engineering and associate chair for research and extension, is the recipient of the Mid-Career Achievement in Research Award from the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at Iowa State University. Soupir’s work is improving water quality through basic and applied research on pollutant fate and transport. She works across multiple scales (lab, pilot, field and watershed) to investigate the occurrence, fate and transport of pathogens, pathogen indicators, nutrients and contaminants of emerging environmental concerns such as antibiotics and antibiotic-resistant organisms. She is leading large multidisciplinary teams in these efforts.
While Soupir’s research outputs are significant, her mentorship of the next generation of scientists and engineers is also notable. She has mentored 33 graduate students and 69 undergraduate researchers. Her mentorship also extends to younger faculty at Iowa State. Equally important to Soupir is her teaching program in land and water resources, which has included course development, curriculum design and integration of environmental topics into introductory courses. She has also used research outcomes to develop K-12 curricular materials and hands-on educational activities.