The Environmental, Water Resources, and Coastal Engineering (EWC) group held their annual Graduate Research Symposium on Friday, March 6th, at the Park Alumni Center on Centennial Campus. This was the 20th year for the student-organized event, which featured the research of more than 50 Ph.D., Masters and undergraduate researchers. For more than two hours, 32 judges viewed posters and discussed research with our students. The first round of judging led to 12 finalists, who each presented for four minutes to the entire audience, which included their peers, faculty, visiting prospective graduate students, the judges and representatives from the many sponsors who make this event possible.
First place was awarded to Samrin Ahmed Kusum for her poster entitled “Evaluating the adhesion phenomena of fat, oil, and grease (FOG) deposits on different sewer line surfaces.” She is advised by Drs. Joel Ducoste and Mohammed Pour-Ghaz. Second place went to Amie McElroy whose poster was titled “Pilot-scale biofilters for the cometabolic treatment of 1,4-dioxane at drinking water-relevant concentrations.” Her advisor is Dr. Detlef Knappe. Also advised by Knappe, Zack Hopkins earned third place with his presentation “Adsorption of PFAS by granular activated carbon: Scale-up of bench-scale data and factors controlling GAC use rates.”
Other finalists included: Yazeed Algurainy, Lan Cheng, Sean Daly, Zisu Hao, Aditya Keskar, Yi-Chun Lai, Liz Ramsey, A B M Tanvir Pasha, and Leah Weaver. Additionally, the EWC group recognizes several Honorable Mentions including Ashley Bitttner, Megan Johnson, Hanieh Mohamadi Moghadam, Asmita Narode, Sierra Schupp, and Maggie Thompson.
The keynote speaker was Dr. Kara Nelson, Professor of Environmental Engineering and Associate Dean of Equity and Inclusion in the College of Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley. She discussed two approaches to recovering valuable resources from wastewater, including nutrients, energy, and recycled water for agriculture crops.
The department thanks all involved in this event, including the graduate student committees, our judges, and industry partners who sponsorship makes events like this possible.
The booklet from the event can be found here and includes descriptions of all the presentations, a more detailed overview of the keynote address, a list of judges, and a list of sponsors.