Richard K. Sutton, professor emeritus of agronomy and horticulture, was awarded the distinguished Career Research Award in Green Roof Research Oct. 29 at the Gray to Green Conference in Washington, D.C.
Sutton was nominated by his green colleagues from about a dozen research universities throughout North America and the Green Roofs for Healthy Cities Research Committee for his extraordinary contribution within the field of living architecture for green roof scholarship, leadership and research.
The award signifies Sutton’s contribution of work and commitment to advancing comprehension and understanding of vegetative roof systems. In particular, it honors his investigations, inquiry and insight into the role of using North American grassland and prairie ecologies as systems of study and natural analogs.
The Grey to Green Conference is an annual regional sustainability conference with a focus on green infrastructure implementation at an urban and regional level hosted by Green Roofs for Healthy Cities and the Green Infrastructure Foundation.
“Sutton was honored for his ceaseless leadership and compassionate mentoring of younger faculty, for challenging the common understanding by initiating a series of ideas which is leading to broader discovery and for his leadership of these collaborations which is resulting in the next generation of shared efforts to study vegetative roofs,” Reid Coffman, chair of the Green Roofs for Healthy Cities Research Committee, said.
