David Sabatini is a David Ross Boyd Professor and holds the Sun Oil Company Endowed Chair in the School of Civil Engineering and Environmental Science at the University of Oklahoma, having joined the faculty at OU in 1989. He is Director of the Water Technologies for Emerging Regions (WaTER) Center and Associate Director of the Institute for Applied Surfactant Research at the University of Oklahoma. His research focuses on surfactant-based environmental and biofuel technologies, developing simple technologies for providing safe drinking water in remote villages of developing countries and advancing our understanding of and ability to characterize contaminant fate and transport in the environment.

He is Editor-in-Chief for the Journal of Contaminant Hydrology, Associate Editor for Journal of Surfactants and Detergents, Member of Editorial Board: Journal of Water, Sanitation and Hygiene for Development, and a member of DuPont Chemical Co. Science Advisory Board for site remediation, the WaterCAMPWS Center at the University of Illinois (an NSF/STC) and the Superfund Research Center at the University of Arizona (NIEHS).His research has been supported by NSF, EPA, DOD, DOE, IPEC, SERDP and a number of industries. He has participated in sixty-three external grants with funding of over $11 M. Sabatini has coauthored or coedited four books, over 160 refereed publications and book chapters, and more than 340 presentations. His work has been cited more than 2300 times and 27 publications have been cited at least 27 times (h-index of 27). He has presented invited talks and short courses on five continents.

Dr. Sabatini has received numerous university, national and international awards for his teaching and research, including most recently the Water Environment Federation Pioneer Award (2011), the DaVinci Fellow Award from the DaVinci Institute of Oklahoma (2010), the Oklahoma Medal for Excellence in Teaching at a Research University from the Oklahoma Foundation for Excellence (2010) and the Wiley Outstanding Educator Award for Outstanding Contribution to Environmental Engineering and Science Education from the Association for Environmental Engineering and Science Professors (2008). During AY 1997-1998, he was a senior Fulbright Scholar in Angewandte Geologie at the Universitaet Tuebingen, Germany.

Sabatini has been a partner in the innovative surfactant research and consulting firm Surfactant Associates since 2000 and was a co-founder and co-principal in Surbec Environmental, LLC from 1996 to 2008 – Surbec is an environmental remediation firm that resulted from surfactant-based environmental remediation technologies and patents that resulted from his collaborative university research. Sabatini has conducted proprietary research and been a consultant to many industrial organizations based on his surfactant and environmental expertise. Sabatini received his BS in civil engineering (CE) from the University of Illinois (1981), his MSCE from Memphis State University (1985) and his PhD from Iowa State University (1989).