Professor Kimberly Gray joined the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Northwestern University in 1995. She received her Ph.D. from the Johns Hopkins University in 1988 and worked as a research engineer for the Lyonnaise des Eaux in Paris, France for 2 years. Gray has made chemistry the backbone of her research. Learning how to harness light energy to catalyze reactions to attack pollutants or make chemical fuels, tracing chemicals through food webs in the Great Lakes and figuring out how wetlands work – all of this falls under Gray’s investigative umbrella. Gray is a creative educator who strives to keep things interesting for both her students and herself, a collaborator with diverse faculty across the University, a committed metor to young women in science and engineering, and a social advocate helping disadvantage individuals and communities. Her research and teaching is tightly interwoven with the many issues that underpin the drive toward sustainability. She is particularly interested in ecologically inspired design, especially as applied to cities. 

She was a recipient of the NSF Presidential Young Investigator Award. She was the Associate Director of the NSF Environmental Molecular Science Institute for Environmental Catalysis at NU from 1998-2005 and is the Director of the Environmental Science, Engineering and Policy Program (joint between WCAS and MEAS) since 2003. She was the 1998-99 president of the Association of Environmental Engineering and Science Professors. She is a member of the Board of Directors of Chicagoland Redevelopment Institute and works closely with the Chicago Legal Clinic to solve environmental problems for low-income urban communities.