Originally published here by the Institute for Resilient Infrastructure Systems.
VICKSBURG, MS – Dr. Todd S. Bridges has spent decades working on new ideas, and after a 31-year career with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), he isn’t slowing down just yet. Bridges “retired” last year as a full-time Professor of Practice with the University of Georgia Institute for Resilient Infrastructure Systems (UGA IRIS), and this month celebrated his induction into the Waterways Experiment Station (WES) Gallery of Distinguished Civilian Employees by the USACE Engineer Research & Development Center (ERDC).
Bridges earned his bachelor’s degree in zoology and master’s in biology from California State University, before attending North Carolina State University for his doctorate in biological oceanography. He joined ERDC right after graduation as a research biologist, serving as the research lead for the Ecotoxicology and Environmental Risk team for five years. Following this, he became the director of the Center for Contaminated Sediments, and later served as a senior research scientist for ERDC and program manager for the Dredging Operations Environmental Research Program (DOER). As his penultimate achievement at ERDC, Bridges founded the Engineering With Nature® initiative in 2010 and later co-founded the Network for Engineering With Nature with UGA IRIS.
The WES Gallery of Distinguished Employees is an honor that has been bestowed on 115 people in ERDC-WES’s 95 years of operation. Dr. Bridges makes the 116th honoree, solidifying his legacy as a leader in the ERDC community. In his role as a program manager on the national stage, Bridges created “hundreds of millions of dollars in cost savings and costs avoided,” built new collaborations with agencies across the country, developed multiple new technologies, and led a team of scientists and engineers in the deployment of those technologies on a national scale during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The program for the 2024 ERDC Awards Day, where Bridges was inducted, read: “Bridges’ innovations in the environmental sciences directly benefited USACE’s $60 billion military and civil works missions, and his technologies have directly benefited hundreds of researchers, scientists, and engineers in more than 100 organizations and agencies across the public sector, private industry, and academia.”
The awards ceremony was held Thursday, August 1, and honored over 700 people across ERDC. In Bridges’ remarks at the event, he thanked colleagues from across his career and asserted that great organizations are built on great people. We’re thankful to have great people like Dr. Bridges on our team here at IRIS [and at N-EWN!], and congratulate him on this honor.
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