Clean Water Services is a resource recovery utility serving approximately 600,000 residents of Washington County, Oregon. CWS was one of the first utilities in the country to receive a stringent effluent phosphorus limit and has spent decades learning how to successfully achieve an effluent limit of 0.1 mg/L total phosphorus through a combination of chemical and biological phosphorus removal. Over the last five years, CWS has invested heavily in research to better understand the fundamental mechanisms governing BPR stability. In this presentation, Adrienne Menniti, principal process engineer at Clean Water Services, will provide an overview of CWS as utility, describe how research fits into the CWS mission, and provide an introduction to the BPR research program. Dr. Menniti will also discuss her career path since receiving a Ph.D. in environmental engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and review job roles and opportunities for environmental professionals with post graduate degrees in the CWS organization.