Annual Report Year 2009 - Civil and Environmental Engineering

PROGRAM AREAS
ENVIRONMENTAL AND WATER RESOURCES ENGINEERING
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mediation and solid waste management.
His students, Jongmin Kim and Chul
Park, presented two papers at the annual
Water Environment Federation meeting in
Chicago. Another student, Chris Wilson,
was a coauthor on another paper presented
at this conference.
Wilson also presented a paper at the
Residuals and Biosolids Management
Conference in Portland, Ore.
Vijesh Karatt presented a paper at the
New York Water Environment Association
on solid waste management.
Research continued with projects supported
by Siemens Corporation, DC Water
& Sewer Authority, CH2M-HILL and Waste
Management, Inc.
In addition, a project with the Mid Atlantic
Biosolids Association continued. Four
papers were published in research journals
and seven papers were included in
conference proceeding.
Novak served as the advisor for 10
graduate students this past year.
He also continued his service as an associate
editor for the journal Water Environment
Research.
Amy Pruden has had an exciting and
busy first year at Virginia Tech, coming
to Blacksburg after six years at Colorado
State University.
The year kicked off with a Discovery
Channel interview for its new series: “Sci
Trek: Killer Germs” in which she explored
the environmental pathways of antibiotic
resistance.
Two months later, she was selected to
attend the National Academy of Engineering
Frontiers Symposium in Albuquerque,
N.M., where she sat alongside some of
the nation’s brightest engineers between
the ages of 30-45, and learned about the
cutting edge in homeland security, drug
delivery, and cognitive engineering.
Pruden taught two courses this year,
CEE 5194 Environmental Engineering
Microbiology and CEE 3104 Introduction
to Environmental Engineering.
Her graduate students also had a busy
year.
Chad McKinney helped Pruden set up
the laboratories in Hancock for new research
projects, and began experiments
on disinfection of antibiotic resistance
genes.
Two other Ph.D. students joined her
research group. Yanjun (Becky) Ma will
be examining persistence of antibiotic
resistance in soils, while Hong Wang is
developing methods for quantification of
water-borne pathogens using molecular
biological techniques.
She also started a new project with
Mark Widdowson in which they will advise
Ph.D. student Nicole Fahrenfeld in demonstrating
the feasibility of TNT bioremediation
in anaerobic aquifer sediments.
In the spring Pruden had the honor of
giving two invited lectures in the UK, one
at the Society of General Microbiology in
Harrogate and the second at the University
of Newcastle Upon Tyne.
Finally, she is happy to see her first
book come into print, “Hormones and
Pharmaceuticals Generated from Concentrated
Animal Feeding Operations:
Transport in Water and Soil,” which she
co-edited with Laurence Shore through
Springer publishing.
This past year was a busy, yet highly
successful one for Peter Vikesland’s research
group.
During the year, two Ph.D. students,
Krista Rule Wigginton and E. Matthew
Fiss, completed their dissertations. They
were the first two Ph.D. students to complete
their doctoral studies in the Vikesland
group and have set the bar high for
future doctoral students. Wigginton is currently
employed as a postdoctoral scholar
at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de
Lausanne (EPFL) in Lausanne, Switzerland,
and Fiss is working as a consultant
in Charlotte, N.C.
Two M.S. students, Komgrit Kotcharaksa
(K2) and John Templeton, also finished
their theses during this past year.
His remaining graduate group now
consists of four Ph.D. students, Xiaojun
Chang, Rebecca Halvorson, Matthew Hull,
and Robert Rebodos, one M.S. student,
Lisa DeGrazia, one postdoctoral scholar,
Andrew Whelton, and one research scientist,
Weinan Leng.
Travel to foreign countries was a general
theme for the year with Vikesland
attending conferences in both Aix-en-
Provence, France and Singapore and
three students undertaking research experiences
abroad.
In the summer of 2008, Wigginton
worked for three months at EPFL. In the
summer of 2009, Halvorson worked at
Nanyang Technological University in Singapore
and DeGrazia was a summer intern
with the non-government organization
DAI in Cambodia.
In the fall, Vikesland spent four months
at the Le Centre Européen de Recherche
et d¹Enseignement des Géosciences de
l’Environnement (CEREGE) in Aix-en-
Provence. At the CEREGE, Vikesland
continued his work examining engineered
and natural nanomaterial fate in the environment.
Mark Widdowson and his colleagues
initiated two new projects funded by the
Environmental Security Technology Certification
Program (ESTCP). ESTCP is a
Department of Defense (DoD) program
that promotes innovative, cost-effective
environmental technologies through demonstration
and validation at DoD sites.
The aim of one project is to validate a
methodology for assessing the long-term
sustainability of biodegradation-based
remedial action plans at chlorinated solvent
sites. The second project involves
the performance and analysis field-scale
mass-transfer tests at the former Williams
Air Force Base where a source zone
remediation pilot test, using terminal enhanced
extraction, is underway.
Widdowson and his students presented
papers at the tenth International In Situ
and On-Site Bioremediation Symposium
and other conferences.
Widdowson presented an invited paper
on the subject of remedial timeframes at
sites contaminated with polycyclic aromatic
compounds (PAHs) at an EPA workshop
on the remediation of manufactured gas
plants in May 2009.
He presented short courses on groundwater
remediation to the National Ground
Water Association and the Environmental
Professionals Organizations of Connecticut.
Last year, Widdowson ended a five-year
term as coordinator of the EWR graduate
program.
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