He was elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering in 2014 for contributions to mathematical modeling, optimization, and automatic control of chemical and microelectronic processes, as well as professional leadership. Edgar is the George T. and Gladys H. Abell Chair in Chemical Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin. Edgar received his B.S. in Chemical Engineering in 1967 from the University of Kansas and his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering in 1971 from Princeton University. Edgar worked briefly as a process engineer at Continental Oil Company before moving to the UT Faculty of Chemical Engineering in 1971. He was Department Chair of Chemical Engineering (1985-93), Associate Dean of Engineering (1993-96) and Associate Vice President for Academic Computing (1996-2001) at UT-Austin. In 2012 he became director of the University of Texas at the Austin Energy Institute.