Vicky Keramida

Dr. Vicky Keramida is the CEO, Chief Technical Officer and founder of KERAMIDA Inc. Dr. Keramida holds M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Environmental Engineering from Purdue University and a B.S. in Sciences also from Purdue. She is a nationally recognized expert in remediation, waste and wastewater management, water quality, and sustainability strategies. She is the author of manuals and technical textbooks, holds a patent on hazardous waste treatment and reuse, and has published and presented over 200 technical papers. Dr. Keramida serves as Board Member and Chairman of the Board of numerous industrial and civic organizations, as well as governmental agencies and universities. She has served as an expert witness in many cases involving complex source and cause of contamination issues, vapor intrusion issues, investigation/remediation issues, water quality, wastewater treatment, fish kills, and toxicology and the impacts of chemicals on human health. Dr. Keramida has received many awards for technical excellence and business leadership, including Purdue University’s Civil Engineering Distinguished Alumni Achievement Award, and American Foundry Society’s Life Achievement Award. She is a member of the KERAMIDA Litigation Experts Group and a frequent lecturer at Purdue University’s School of Civil Engineering.

Dr. Keramida has played a lead role in conceiving and developing KERAMIDA’s Sustainability Model Program for Cities, including Sustainability Metrics for Capital Projects and Rebirth of City Economies through Rivers. Dr. Keramida has, furthermore, developed the Profitable Urban Farming and EcoCrossroads Initiative. She has played a lead role in municipal planning projects, including Successful Integration of Industries into Cities, Brownfields Redevelopment for Neighborhood Revitalization, the creation through legislation of a Taxing Authority responsible for cleaning up a Superfund Site, Reuse of Superfund Sites, Sustainable Development of Parks on Remediated Superfund Sites, Regional Water Quality Planning, and Regional Water Resources Management.

In the industrial arena, Dr. Keramida is leading KERAMIDA’s GreenSTEP™ Sustainability Initiative, a planning process and metrics rating system for Sustainable businesses and industry. The software-based GreenSTEP™ incorporates market sector-specific metrics developed by KERAMIDA.

In 2000, Dr. Keramida founded a Sustainability research and development company in California, TECHNIKON, LLC, and privatized a U.S. Department of Defense 5-year old green manufacturing research program. TECHNIKON, whose major clients included the U.S. DoD and U.S. car manufacturers, focused its sustainability research on green manufacturing to eliminate air pollution and wastes, as well as on validation of Biomass-to-Energy processes, and became a not-for-profit institute in 2011.

Dr. Keramida has over 30 years of experience with many Superfund sites, having been responsible for activities in all phases, on behalf of clients, including: search for PRPs; Chairing PRP Technical Committee; performing RI/FS and remedial design; drafting the technical portion of Consent Decrees; Negotiating with USEPA and state agencies; holding public meetings and preparing materials for public outreach; overseeing remedy construction activities; conducting O&M; and preparing and submitting to the USEPA and state all required reports. Dr. Keramida has, furthermore, been instrumental in identifying additional sources of pollutant releases in Superfund sites and in the cause and cost allocation amongst PRPs, and in the creation of special legislation allowing the formation of a special board of elected officials with the authority to undertake the responsibility of a Superfund site and levy taxes for its cleanup. Dr. Keramida secured the approval for the Reuse of a Superfund site by the USEPA and state, based on her comprehensive Reuse Study for that site, and she taught her Superfund Reuse Study in the spring 2016 semester of the Purdue University Civil Engineering Senior Design Course. At the end of this precedent-setting course, the 87 students produced a series of amazingly innovative designs for Superfund Reuse activities.

KERAMIDA and Dr. Keramida are benefactors to the KERAMIDA Foundation for the Environment, Education and Arts, and to a unique Indianapolis museum, the Keramida Museum of Art, featuring World War II paintings, and Greek and Indiana landscapes by renowned Greek artist Alkis Keramidas, winner of the U.S. Marshall Plan Prize for Art. The museum houses over 70 paintings and is free and open to the public. Its space is regularly donated for art events and fundraisers.