Professor Theis is Director of the Institute for Environmental Science and Policy (IESP) at the University of Illinois at Chicago. IESP focuses on the development of new cross-disciplinary research initiatives in the environmental area. He is the erstwhile Bayard D. Clarkson Professor and Director of the Center for Environmental Management at Clarkson University. Professor Theis received his doctoral degree in environmental engineering, with a specialization in environmental chemistry, from the University of Notre Dame.  His areas of expertise include industrial ecology, the mathematical modeling and systems analysis of environmental processes, industrial pollution prevention, the environmental chemistry of trace organic and inorganic substances, interfacial reactions, subsurface contaminant transport, and hazardous waste management.

Dr. Theis has been principal or co-principal investigator on over fifty funded research projects and has authored or co-authored over one hundred twenty papers in peer reviewed research journals, books, and reports.  In 2011, he and Jonathan Tomkin (University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign) co-edited the e-textbook “Sustainability: A Comprehensive Foundation”. He served as a member of the USEPA Chartered Science Advisory Board (2003-2009), and is past editor of the Journal of Environmental Engineering. From 1980-1985 he was the co-director of the Industrial Waste Elimination Research Center (a collaboration of Illinois Institute of Technology and University of Notre Dame), one of the first Centers of Excellence established by the USEPA. In 1989 he was an invited participant on the United Nations’ Scientific Committee on Problems in the Environment (SCOPE) Workshop on Groundwater Contamination, in 1998 he was invited to by the World Bank to assist in the development of the first environmental engineering program in Argentina, in January, 2009 he delivered the keynote address at the NitroEurope Conference in Gothenburg, Sweden, and in October 2009 he was a member of the US delegation to the US-Japan Workshop on Life Cycle Assessment and Infrastructure Materials in Sapporo, Japan. He is the founding Principal Investigator of the Environmental Manufacturing Management Program.