Annual Report Year 2009 - Civil and Environmental Engineering

PROGRAM AREAS
ENVIRONMENTAL AND WATER RESOURCES ENGINEERING
26 | VIA REPORT | 2009
Continued from page 25
velopment design, water resources, and
geographic information systems’ applications.
He was recognized this year with
two major teaching awards: the College of
Engineering Certificate of Teaching Excellence
and the G.V. Loganathan Teaching
Award.
This past year, he also coordinated volunteer
professional engineers in teaching
an advanced land development design
course, mentored a new three credit
course on sustainable land development
as part of the new curricular effort called
the Land Development Design Initiative
(LDDI).
LDDI is a new effort to involve practitioners
in promoting the career of land development
design to CEE undergraduates
and to expand the learning opportunities
for students in this area. More information
is available at www.Iddi.net.
LDDI was also honored to receive a
second place award from the National
Council of Examiner for Engineering and
Surveying (NCEES) in its contest on “Connecting
Professional Practice and Education.”
Dymond completed his sixth and final
year as the co-director of the Center
for Geospatial Information Technology
(CGIT).
Dymond continues to stay busy with
numerous research projects such as
floodplain mapping, urban stormwater
systems, hazard mitigation planning, and
infrastructure operations.
Dymond was involved in three presentations
at three different conferences
during the year on floodplain modeling
techniques and hazard mitigation. One paper
was published in the Journal of Flood
Engineering and two other papers are currently
in review.
Dymond served as principal investigator
on two new research proposals on urban
stormwater management, and he continued
work on eight previous projects.
Marc Edwards had a “front-page” year.
He was the commencement speaker at
Virginia Tech’s Graduate School Commencement
in December. He presented
seven other keynote addresses at national/international
conferences.
His research on childhood lead poisoning
from contaminated drinking water in
the Washington D.C. area was once again
front-page news on the web and in print
media.
Edwards’ group also continued active
research projects on concrete, brass, copper
and lead corrosion, as well as work on
nitrification, legionella and coagulation.
In 2009, Edwards received a National
Association of Corrosion Engineers
(NACE) technical achievement award.
Members of Edwards’ research group
traveled to San Diego for the American
Water Works Association National Conference
and made nine presentations.
Group members making the trip or having
work presented include Randi Lieberman,
Jeff Parks, Brandi Clark, Simoni Triantafyllidou,
Yan Zhang, Carolyn Nguyen, Kendall
Stone, Ben Custalow, Yaofu Zhang,
Anusha Kashyup, Emily Sarver and Paolo
Scardina. The group also continued active
research projects on concrete, brass, copper
and lead corrosion, as well as work on
nitrification, legionella and coagulation.
For nearly a decade, Dan Gallagher
and his students have modeled microbial
growth in food products from farm to fork
with funding from the U.S. Department of
Agriculture (USDA).
In the past year, Gallagher made many
trips to Washington, D.C., to inform regulators,
policymakers, and industry how
best to implement these models and associated
monitoring programs.
This year, graduate student Sarah Endrikat
and undergraduate Owen Gallagher
assisted him.
Most recently, he has begun development
of a bacterial cross contamination
model for retail grocery stores as part of a
joint USDA/Food and Drug Administration
project.
In the drinking water arena of his research
program, graduate student James
Newbold modeled contaminant transport
in distribution systems and Gallagher travelled
to Korea for a presentation on statistical
analyses of customer complaint data.
Adil Godrej’s research work on the Occoquan
model continued this year, with
his Ph.D. student Yingmei Liu working on
the completion of the last update period
(2002-07). Some predictive runs, using
models of previous periods, have been
made.
Liu is also working on a protocol for a
sensitivity analysis of the linked model,
as part of her research work on BMP and
agricultural chemical usage in the Lake
Manassas subwatershed model.
Another Ph.D. student, whom Godrej
is co-advising with Tom Grizzard, will be
working on a web application of the model
(or a neural network version of it).
Niffy Saji, Godrej’s masters student,
graduated after finishing her work on lake
zonation, and now works for Fairfax Water.
Godrej continued his work on various
regional and local committees that deal
with water and watershed issues.
Tom Grizzard continued as director
of the Occoquan Watershed Monitoring
Laboratory (OWML), and also began his
35th year of service to Virginia Tech.
Along with his regular teaching activities
in the EWR program in Northern Virginia,
he continued with a number of University
service roles in the Northern Capitol region.
With colleagues, Grizzard continued
his research activities in wastewater reclamation,
source water management, and
management of surface water quality in
urbanizing watersheds. Together with Adil
Godrej, this accounts for nearly $2 million
in funding in 2009.
Through an inter-departmental cooperative
agreement, a biological systems engineering
(BSE) faculty member is hosted
at OWML. This agreement and expanded
research activities created a need for additional
laboratory and office space in the
Manassas facility. In response, Grizzard
took charge of constructing a 25 percent
space increase addition and refurbishment
to the lab and office space, including faculty
and graduate student research areas
at the OWML.
Through a new agreement between
Virginia Tech and the French Engineering
Graduate School École des Mine de
St. Etienne, Grizzard hosted a French
student for the summer term, and an environmental
engineering professor in the
fall semester. Also in the vein of international
collaboration, Grizzard participated
in hosting delegations visiting the U.S. to
Continued on page 27