Stanley E. Kappe Award

The Stanley E. Kappe Award honors the man whose dedicated leadership, strong devotion, and tireless efforts contributed so much to the growth and advancement of AAEES during the period he served as its Executive Director, 1971 to 1981.

This Award is presented to the Board Certified Environmental Engineer or Board Certified Environmental Scientist who has performed extraordinary and outstanding service contributory to significant advancement of public awareness to the betterment of the total environment and other objectives to the Academy.

Click here for the full criteria and nomination forms.

2026 Stanley E. Kappe Award Recipient

David A. Vaccari, Ph.D., P.E., BCEE

David A. Vaccari is a Professor Emeritus of environmental engineering at Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, NJ.  He has a master’s and PhD in environmental science and a masters’ in chemical engineering, all from Rutgers University. Originally focused on wastewater treatment and water pollution, he also specializes in nonlinear statistical modeling in general and modeling of global phosphorus resource flows in particular. The work in phosphorus drew from experience with NASA in the development of bioregenerative life support systems for long-term space missions, and from the development of a textbook published by Wiley, Inc., “Environmental Biology for Scientists and Engineers.” The phosphorus work also led to publishing an article on phosphorus resources in Scientific American Magazine. 

Dr. Vaccari was a member of the Board of Directors of ABET, Inc., and has served as a Commissioner and a Program Evaluator of ABET and is currently on the ABET Board of Delegates. 

He was President of AAEES (2023) and is a member and former chair of the AAEES Education Committee.  Dr. Vaccariis a licensed professional engineer, a Board-Certified Environmental Engineer, and is listed in the Who's Who in Environmental Engineering and Science.

Past Recipients

Click the table header to sort the table.