User:Drjohntoconnor/John T. O'Connor

Dr. John T. O’Connor, PE

Dr. John O’Connor is widely published in the field of drinking water quality and treatment. He has conducted numerous federally-funded studies of drinking water treatment, including the removal of arsenic, mercury, virus and disinfection by-products from water supplies. He initiated early studies of microbially-mediated corrosion and water quality deterioration in water distribution systems and was among the first to apply advanced epifluorescent microscopic techniques to the direct enumeration of total bacterial populations in treated drinking water.

Dr. O’Connor earned a doctorate in Sanitary Engineering and Water Resources from The Johns Hopkins University and is a registered professional civil engineer in Illinois and Missouri.

He was Professor of Civil Engineering at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign from 1961-1975 and was subsequently appointed Chair and C.W. LaPierre Professor of Civil Engineering at the University of Missouri-Columbia, a position he held from 1975-1992. He served as Chief of the Illinois State Water Survey, Champaign, Illinois from 1992 to 1995.

In 1993, Dr. O’Connor established H2O'C Engineering, a Columbia, Missouri-based consulting engineering firm specializing in water and wastewater treatment.

Dr. O’Connor is an Fellow of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) and recipient of the 1980 ASCE Simon Freese Award and Lecture. A Fulbright Award recipient, he has served as Chair of the Fulbright Awards Committee for Australasia.

Based on his publications on water treatment, Dr. O’Connor has received the 2002 and 2009 American Water Works Association (AWWA) Warren Kramer Awards. He was elected Honorary Member of the Missouri Water and Wastewater Conference in 2007 and is a Life Member of the American Chemical Society, Water Environment Federation and AWWA.

Dr. O’Connor contributed two chapters to the 2002 American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) Manual on Control of Microorganisms in Drinking Water. In 2009, based on his drinking water treatment consulting experiences, his book on Water Treatment Plant Performance Evaluations and Operations was published by John Wiley and Sons. A comprehensive listing of his publications, as well as downloadable pdfs of recent reports on water treatment, can be accessed at www.h2oc.com.