E&EM doctoral students Edward Hagarty and Stephan Fields presented the interim results of their on-going doctoral research efforts on Wednesday, April 25, 2007 at the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) first annual Graduate Student R&D Showcase. That event, which was conducted in the Marvin Center’s Continental Ballroom, provided highlights into research activities at SEAS while fostering interactions among local and regional industry, governmental organizations and SEAS faculty and graduate students. It was organized under the auspices of the SEAS Council of Entrepreneurial Tech Transfer and Commercialization. Ed and Steve’s projects were among 47 research projects presented by graduate student principal investigators at the R&D poster session.
The title of Steve’s display was “Decision Support Model for Management of Leaking Underground Storage Tanks.” Steve’s project focuses on the development of a decision support model to identify the preferred technology for state environmental managers to use when managing Leaking Underground Storage Tanks (LUSTs) using the principles of statistical theory. Steve’s model compares two in-situ groundwater remediation technologies, air-sparging and bioremediation, at nearly 300 LUST sites in South Carolina.
The title of Ed’s display was “A Predictive Risk Modeling System for the Management of Small-Scale Water and Wastewater Facilities.” The goal of Ed’s project is to develop a decision-aiding system to help public health and environmental managers select the water and wastewater projects which maximize public health benefits within a given budget. The research includes identifying and ranking of public health risk criteria, followed by testing the system based on the water and wastewater projects at the Grand Canyon National Park.
The keynote speaker at the SEAS Workshop was Dr. Adnan Akay, Division Director of Civil, Mechanical, & Manufacturing Innovation at the National Science Foundation. The event was highly successful and will be repeated next year.