The Prairie Research Institute earlier this year recognized employees who were nominated by colleagues for their outstanding achievements and excellent work. The Employee Recognition Program celebrates effort, achievement, excellence, and PRI’s appreciation.
Richard Berg is a recipient of the Prairie Research Institute’s 2025 Research Scientist Career Achievement Award, which recognizes the achievements of a PRI scientist whose fundamental discoveries, new theories, or insights have had a significant impact over the course of their career. Berg’s outstanding career, as described by his nominators:
Berg retired this year after 50 years of service at the Illinois State Geological Survey. When he was named ISGS director and Illinois State Geologist in 2015, Berg had worked under seven of the 13 ISGS directors who preceded him since the survey’s founding in 1851. Throughout his career, he has been an advocate of science and communicating it to stakeholders so that they could make more informed decisions. He has provided expansive and longitudinal leadership both at ISGS and through his service in national geoscience organizations and has raised awareness for national issues like rare earth elements and critical minerals.
Berg holds a bachelor’s degree from Indiana State University and a master’s degree from Eastern Michigan University. He received his Ph.D. in soil geomorphology from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in 1979.
Through his research, expertise, and leadership, Berg is a pioneer in 3D geological mapping and aquifer contamination. He has an extensive list of published research prior to becoming ISGS director and continued work on “passion projects on the importance (economic and societal) of geologic mapping” after his appointment.
Early in his career, he worked on statewide 3D geological mapping and contamination potential assessment. As part of a governor’s task force, he helped develop the State Groundwater Protection Act of 1985, in which his ISGS research is cited nine times. He was later a founding member of the Mahomet Aquifer Consortium.
Berg has a talent for meeting anyone and “striking up an acquaintance and developing it quickly into a working coalition.” Between 2000 and 2014, he organized more than 800 meetings with congressional staff in Washington D.C. for state geological survey geologists from the Great Lakes states. He led efforts to brief congressional delegations and committees and federal officials on the importance of geological mapping and how it directly addresses sustainable water and mineral resource issues, environmental problems, and overall economic development considerations. On more than one occasion, Berg led the group to meet with nearly every congressional office from six states — 160 meetings — in just four days.
Through 20 years of leadership with the Geological Society of America and the Association of American State Geologists, Berg influenced national geoscience priorities and increased the visibility of ISGS and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. One nominator wrote, “He has had a profound national and international impact on advancing geoscience awareness and the role of science in public policy.” His leadership has been recognized with the Geological Society of America’s Distinguished Service Award and the Association of American State Geologists Presidential Award, which he received three times. These awards recognized his work to advance the U.S. position in critical minerals, infrastructure, groundwater protection, geological mapping and its cost-benefit analysis, and national mapping, through work with the U.S. Geological Survey, as well as work to reauthorize the National Geologic Mapping Act of 1992.