Two CEE students receive Rackham Fellowships
CEE Ph.D. students Sherri Cook (advised by Nancy Love & Steve Skerlos) and Lingli He (advised by Valeriy Ivanov) were awarded Rackham Predoctoral Fellowships. The Rackham Predoctoral Fellowship supports outstanding doctoral students who have achieved candidacy and are actively working on dissertation research and writing. Below is more information about the research each of our winners do.
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Sherri’s research aims to advance the science of sustainability decision-making in the context of waste management. One case study explores how to manage unused medication; it compares and quantifies the environmental emissions associated with disposal options using life cycle assessment methodology along with fate and transport models for pharmaceutical in landfills and wastewater treatment plants. The second case study explores the ability of anaerobic treatment technologies to maximize nutrient and energy recovery from wastewater, food wastes, and agricultural wastes without compromising operational stability. The fundamental approach of simultaneously investigating treatment performance with the triple bottom line of environmental, economic, and social factors will be extended in future work to other contemporary issues in environmental engineering. |
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Lingli He's research focuses on studying the effect of fine-scale vegetation or soil moisture heterogeneities on larger-scale water and energy variables. Her PhD dissertation topic will explore the three-dimensional structure of the water uptake process that takes place at the scale of individual roots, and how the spatiotemporal variation of the three-dimensional water uptake patterns can nonlinearly impact ecosystem-scale water stress status and energy fluxes. |
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