Dr. Ed McBean received his B.A.Sc. from University of British Columbia BC., Canada.. He received his S. M., C.E., and PhD. from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Ma, USA. Dr. McBean joined the faculty at the University of Guelph in 2003 as a Canada Research Chair in Water Supply Security. At U of Guelph, Ed is involved in research into failure modes of water supply systems, dealing with such aspects as reliability, vulnerability, monitoring protocols, surrogate sampling, and decision-making.

Prior to joining the faculty at Guelph, Ed was the President of CRA Engineering Inc. and Vice-President of Conestoga-Rovers & Associates where his predominant activities were in risk assessment, water supply concerns, fate and transport issues, and statistical interpretation of environmental data. Conestoga-Rovers & Associates is an environmental engineering firm of approximately 1800 employees.

Ed's work experience also includes more than twenty-two years as a faculty member at the University of Waterloo and the University of California . In the period 1968-1974 Ed worked with Acres Consulting Services (Niagara Falls, Ontario), Meta Systems Inc. (Cambridge, Massachusetts) , Cornell University (Research Associate), and M.I.T. (Visiting Engineer).

Ed is a recipient of Gold Medal from the Institution of Engineers (India), the Nawab Zain Yar Jung Bahadur Memorial Gold Medal for 1986-87. He has also been a Visiting Erskine Scholar at the University of Canterbury, and recipient a fellowship from the Japanese Society for Promotion of Sciences, and a UNESCO/UNDP fellow on a number of occasions.