Owen Duckworth is a Professor of Soil and Environmental Chemistry in Crop and Soil Sciences at North Carolina State University. He has a B.S. in Chemistry and Geology from the College of William and Mary, an M.S. in Environmental Sciences and Engineering from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and a Ph.D. in Applied Sciences and Engineering from Harvard University. He was named a North Carolina State University Faculty Scholar and Research Triangle Institute (RTI) University Scholar in 2016, and awarded the Jackson Soil Chemistry and Mineralogy Award in 2020, and named a Fellow of the Soil Science Society of America in 2023.

His research group focuses on unraveling the mechanisms of important natural processes that control the fate, transport, and uptake of nutrient and contaminant metals in soils, natural waters, and engineered systems. Understanding these processes at the fundamental level is essential to solving critical modern societal problems, including managing and remediating polluted sites, protecting public health, improving nutrient uptake by crops or other plants, and developing novel resource recovery strategies. Although the work is rooted in fundamental discovery, I am always thinking about how its application may help improve environmental quality, foster sustainable circular economies, and enable human wellbeing.