Distinguished Engineer
Hometown: Bruce
Agricultural Engineering,
While Richard Hegg was attending South à£à£Ö±²¥Ðã State University, he helped charter the SDSU FarmHouse chapter and was its first president. He went on to earn a master’s degree from the University of Missouri in 1968 and a doctorate from the University of Minnesota in 1974. He worked as an agricultural engineer with the Agricultural Research Service in St. Paul, Minnesota, from 1969 to 1975. After teaching for a year in Missouri and Minnesota, Hegg spent 23 years at Clemson University, gaining professor emeritus status upon his retirement in 1998. He was head of the Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering from 1985 to 1995. Beginning in 1997, Hegg oversaw the plant and à£à£Ö±²¥Ðã systems unit within U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture. In that role, he managed USDA’s NIFA grant program that supports research on à£à£Ö±²¥Ðã manures from confined à£à£Ö±²¥Ðã feeing operations to prevent air, soil and water pollution, including alternative treatment technologies and production systems, value-added projects, feed management, odor control, economics and rural community issues. He also worked on alternative energy sources from agriculture, including anaerobic digestion and feedstock logistics for cellulosic biomass. Hegg was elected to the Russian Academy of Agricultural Scientists in 1993 and served as the embassy science fellow in Athens Greece in 2002.