Gitau to lead Purdue Institute for a Sustainable Future

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — The Purdue Institute for a Sustainable Future (ISF) is beginning 2025 with new leadership. Margaret Gitau, professor of agricultural and biological engineering, has accepted the position of director of the institute, which is located in Discovery Park District at Purdue, succeeding founding director Matt Huber. The leadership change was announced by Dan DeLaurentis, vice president for Discovery Park District Institutes.
“The ISF has achieved much success, founded on the networks of people that the institute has formed and equipped with the right resources to pursue the most important challenges in the sustainability area,” DeLaurentis said. “Margaret is committed to continue this model and is eager to listen and learn from the community to achieve even greater successes.”
Huber led ISF since its 2022 inception and was named the David E. Ross Director of the institute in 2023. Huber is currently on sabbatical at Yale University.
“It has been the greatest honor to serve as the founding director of ISF and to work closely with the amazing array of Purdue faculty, students and staff who are working on sustainability,” Huber said. “This is an exciting time with many opportunities for the research communities, initiatives and teams that ISF has gathered together, and I believe that Margaret Gitau is a great choice to lead ISF moving forward given her depth of expertise across food-energy-water systems and the international scope of her research.”
Gitau’s research focuses on water resources, with an emphasis on water quality, integrated hydrologic and water quality modeling, and data-driven decision-making and management. Her work includes developing strategies and solutions for analysis in data-scarce areas. She also studies the interdependence among food, energy and water systems, with a particular focus on water resource sustainability at the nexus.
Gitau has served as associate editor for two publications from the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers, Transactions of the ASABE and Applied Engineering in Agriculture. She is currently on the editorial boards of the Journal of Soil and Water Conservation and Water Resources Management. She co-founded and co-leads the Alliance for Modernizing African Agrifood Systems, a global and strategic initiative of the ASABE. Gitau is also the founding president of the Mentoring Network for African Women in Academia.
A 2020 Carnegie African Diaspora fellow, Gitau also has served as an expert committee member with the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.
“I am very excited to be taking on the role of ISF director, to be guiding the institute in shaping its future. We have incredible talent in our staff, leadership team and faculty affiliates, which is inspiring to me,” Gitau said. “There is already a whole lot that has been accomplished by ISF through the communities, special initiatives, strategic research teams and other internal endeavors. We will build upon these accomplishments and the foundation that has been set as we explore new horizons to elevate the status of ISF.”
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Media contact: Amy Raley, araley@purdue.edu