Sustainability Engineer

“I was fortunate to stumble on to something where I could make a difference,” says Professor John Sutherland, who was elected to the U.S. National Academy of Engineering. “I was one small pebble that started many pebbles, and we’ve made some progress in the last 30 years.” (Image by Will Cabrall)

Growing up in the western suburbs of Chicago, John W. Sutherland, ’80 ENG, MS ’82 ENG, PHD ’87 ENG, always liked math and was “pretty good at science.” It was his uncle, an engineer, who told him that he would make a “good” engineer.

Decades later, Sutherland has been recognized as one of the nation’s best. Earlier this year, he was elected to the U.S. National Academy of Engineering “for pioneering research contributions to environmental sustainability in manufacturing and their implementation in industry.”

A professor and the Fehsenfeld Family Head of Environmental and Ecological Engineering (EEE) at Purdue University, Sutherland is one of the world’s leading authorities on applying sustainability principles to design, manufacturing and other industrial issues. He was the first faculty member of the EEE department when he came to Purdue in 2009 from Michigan Technological University, as well as its first permanent head. Since then, he has grown it into one of the nation’s largest environmental engineering programs.

Sutherland describes his work as “environmentally motivated efforts to reduce the environmental footprint of manufacturing and the environmental footprint of products we design.”

He says to create systems that are in harmony with the natural world requires engineers to be more “clever in how [they] think about things and recognize that we need to operate within nature’s cycles.”

“Engineers tend to be very conservative. I think it’s important to take calculated risks,” Sutherland says. “I jumped into a new area that I didn’t know much about, and I tried to continue to challenge myself and pursue new ideas. “

Election to the National Academy of Engineering is considered one of the highest professional honors for an engineer. Sutherland, who received the news in February 2023, says he was surprised, honored and humbled by the whole experience.

“I was fortunate to stumble on to something where I could make a difference. I was one small pebble that started many pebbles, and we’ve made some progress in the last 30 years.”