Student and Faculty Spotlight

ENST Professor Patrick Kangas' Project Aims to Produce Bio-fuel While Cleaning up Bay

algae Weird as it seems, the work of a coral reef is being replicated on therocky banks of the Susquehanna River near Holtwood. Here at the MuddyRun Pumped Storage power plant, two scientists are convinced they havefound a proven way to, at last, clean up the Chesapeake Bay and, at thesame time, provide a renewable alternative fuel to oil. The goals maybe huge but the technology for this "ecological engineering" is fairlybasic. Algae.

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Sustainable Grazing to Control Phragmites australis

goats ENSTgraduate student Jennifer Brundage examines the effectiveness ofgrazing by goats to control common reed, an invasive wetland grassknown as Phragmites australis. In many regions of North America, land managers are using herbicides to control the invasive grass Phragmites australis.While herbicide control is often effective, it is labor, cost, andenergy-intensive and often results in impacts to non-target nativeplants. Now, Marine-Estuarine-Environmental Science major JenniferBrundage is studying how to control this grass in a sustainableway–through grazing by goats.

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Student Designs Cutting-Edge Computer System as Wastewater Treatment Method

algae Water, the world's most precious resource, will soon get a breath offresh life thanks to graduate student David Blersch's research intowastewater treatment methods. An ecological engineering graduatestudent in the Department of Environmental Science and Technology(ENST), David is designing a new computer-based system that will treatwastewater via an algal turf scrubber treatment. The first system tooperate autonomously without human interference, the algal turfscrubber, promises to cut operational expenses of water treatment - andstrip pollutants and harmful nutrients from water.

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Last updated: 03/9/2009