Missouri S&T alumnus to be awarded 2024 Fulbright Prize
ROLLA, Mo. – Gary White, an alumnus of Missouri University of Science and Technology, has been announced as a 2024 recipient of the J. William Fulbright Prize for International Understanding along with Academy award-winning writer, actor and humanitarian Matt Damon.
White is CEO of Water.org and WaterEquity, two organizations he founded with Damon.
According the Fulbright website, the Fulbright Prize has been awarded since 1993 to honor “outstanding contributions toward bringing peoples, cultures or nations to greater understanding of others.” The prize is named after J. William Fulbright, a longtime U.S. senator from Arkansas who created the Fulbright Program.
Four past Fulbright Prize Laureates have later received Nobel Peace Prizes. Those recipients include former South Africa president Nelson Mandela; former U.S. president Jimmy Carter; Kofi Annan, former secretary-general of the United Nations; and Martti Ahtisaari, former president of Finland.
White has more than three decades of experience working to solve the global water and sanitation crisis. Water.org and WaterEquity have helped over 63 million people across four continents have safe access to water or sanitation.
In 2011, he and Damon were named to TIME magazine’s 100 most influential people.
White earned a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from Missouri in 1985, and he completed a master’s degree in the same subject at S&T two years later. He also earned a master’s degree in environmental engineering from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
In November 2023, White returned to his alma mater as part of the Chancellor’s Speaker Series. He is an inaugural member of S&T’s Alumni of Influence, and he delivered S&T’s December 2013 commencement addresses.
He will receive the Fulbright Prize during a ceremony in Washington, D.C., on May 16.
For more information about Missouri S&T’s civil, architectural and environmental engineering programs, visit care.mst.edu.
About Missouri University of Science and Technology
Missouri University of Science and Technology (Missouri S&T) is a STEM-focused research university of over 7,000 students located in Rolla, Missouri. Part of the four-campus University of Missouri System, Missouri S&T offers over 100 degrees in 40 areas of study and is among the nation’s top public universities for salary impact, according to the Wall Street Journal. For more information about Missouri S&T, visit www.mst.edu.
