CEE Students Take Top Awards at CPRC-SETAC

Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) graduate students Dana Armstrong and Gabriela T. Niño de Guzmán were awarded first- and second-place, respectively, at this year’s Chesapeake Potomac Regional Chapter of the Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (CPRC-SETAC) annual meeting in April.

Armstrong received the first-place platform presentation award for her project, “Temporal trends of perfluoroalkyl substances in limed biosolids from a large municipal water resource recovery facility.” Niño de Guzmán took home second place for her presentation, “Using a permeable reactive barrier and the site-native soil microbial community to remediate a trichloroethylene plume.” Both students are advised by CEE Professor Alba Torrents.

In addition to Armstrong and Niño de Guzmán, graduate students Golnaz Khorsha and Qi Yao gave strong presentations. Khorsha presented, “Management of nitrogen in stormwater runoff using a modified conventional sand filter,” and Yao presented, “Assessing the effectiveness of vegetative environmental buffers in mitigating air pollutants from poultry houses.”

The annual meeting serves as a professional forum for individuals from private industry, academia, and government agencies who are engaged in the study, analysis, and solutions for environmental problems, management and regulation of natural resources and research and development. CEE instructional faculty member Dr. Natasha Andrade (CEE, Ph.D. ’12, M.S. ’08, B.S. ’05) played a critical role in organizing this year’s meeting, held at the beautiful Robinson Nature Center. Andrade is secretary of the Board of Directors of CPRC-SETAC.

Published June 4, 2015