Joe Ryan is a Professor in the Department of Civil, Environmental, and Architectural Engineering. He has been teaching and doing research at the University of Colorado since 1993. His research focuses on the role of colloids and surfaces on the fate and transport of contaminants in natural waters. He teaches courses that echo these interests: Water Chemistry, Environmental Organic Chemistry, and Aquatic Surfaces and Particles.
Before coming to the University, Professor Ryan was a National Research Council postdoctoral fellow at the U.S. Geological Survey in Boulder. He came to Boulder from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he earned his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Environmental Engineering. Before graduate school, he worked as an environmental consultant for a couple of years in Minneapolis. He earned his B.S. degree in Geological Engineering from Princeton University, which is located just a few miles south of where he grew up in New Jersey.
He and wife, Martha, a sculptor and instructor at the Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design, and their two children, Odelia and Henry, live at an elevation of 8,700 feet a few miles west of Jamestown.