Annual Report Year 2010 - Civil and Environmental Engineering

Dan
Gallagher
and his
students are
developing
a virtual
deli to track
bacterial cross
contamination
within a retail
deli.
Environment (from page 21)
papers currently in review.
Marc Edwards’ research group graduated
four members including Ben Custalow,
Yaofu Zhang, Allian Griffin, and Kendall Stone.
More than a dozen group members traveled to
national AWWA conferences and gave 11 presentations.
Edwards and his students/colleagues
presented at a National Institute of Health
Conference and the American Public Health
Association Conference.
Yan Zhang won the Outstanding Dissertation
award for 2009 from Virginia Tech and
Simoni Triantafyllidou won a prestigious LARS
scholarship.
Edwards’ multi-year effort to expose harm
done during the Washington, D.C. Lead-in-Water
Crisis 2001-2004, did not end, but perhaps
reached the beginning of the end. The House
Committee on Science Technology investigating
Edwards’ assertions released a report entitled “A
Public Health Tragedy: How Flawed CDC Data
and Faulty Assumption Endangered Children’s
Health.” That report and Edwards’ sworn testimony
to Congress made front-page news.
A research paper by Edwards, Triantafyllidou,
and Dr. Dana Best from Children’s
National Medical Center on health effects of the
high lead in water, won the Best Paper award
from the journal Environmental Science and Technology
for 2009. The research group continues to
emphasize work on sustainable water, pathogens
in water heaters, and plumbing materials corrosion.
Daniel Gallagher continued to teach computer
and modeling-based classes and perform
research with risk assessment and modeling. He
and his graduate and undergraduate students
are currently working on developing two
large-scale models for the U.S. Department of
Agriculture (USDA).
In the first of its kind, they are developing a
“virtual deli” to track bacterial cross contamination
within a retail deli. The model will guide
USDA and the Food and Drug Administration
(FDA) in developing regulations for grocery
stores. Another model will assess how the selection
of various risk assessment metrics impacts
regulatory standards.
Together with Renee Boyer and Susan Duncan,
faculty in food science and technology, he
started a new project to measure how different
sanitation practices at grocery stores impact
public health.
Gallagher and his students published papers
in the Journal of Food Protection and ASCE’s
Environmental Engineering journal and co-authored
presentations to the Society for Risk Analysis,
the AWWA, and the International Symposium
on Problems of Listeriosis.
During the last year, Adil Godrej completed
20 years as a research faculty member at
Virginia Tech.
The Occoquan Model project that his team
of students worked on has evolved to the current
period, and work has commenced on other
items related to the model, such as forecasting
and sensitivity analysis. In spring, Godrej originated
a new course as a special study, “Bridging
the Environmental Divide: Science, Economics,
Ethics, and Society.”
He continued his work on various regional
and local committees that deal with water and
watershed issues.
Dr. Godrej ended a one-year term as the
president of the Virginia Tech National Capital
Region Faculty Association.
Tom Grizzard completed his 35th year
See Environment, page 23
22 | VIA REPORT | 2010