Environmental Science: Water Research & Technology blog

Environmental Science: Water Research & Technology is pleased to announce that Dr Ming Xie has joined the journal as an Associate Editor. Ming is a Lecturer of Chemical and Environmental Engineering at the University of Bath, and an Industrial Fellow by the Royal Academy of Engineering.

Ming’s research is based on membrane technology relating to the areas of food, energy, and water. He was the recipient of the Australia Cheung Kong Endeavour Award in 2018. Dr Xie has published more than 70 peer-reviewed articles in leading journals. His research has attracted more than £15M research funding from Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, Royal Society of Chemistry, Royal Society, British Council and Leverhulme Trust. He also serves in the Technical Advisory Committee for IChemE Sustainability Hub.

As an Associate Editor, Ming welcomes submissions in the areas of membranes, nanofiltration, osmosis and other similar topics relating to water treatment. If you have work that would be relevant to Ming’s expertise, or the journal more generally, submit now to Environmental Science: Water Research & Technology.

Dr. Lin received his Ph.D. from the Department of Earth and Environmental Engineering at Columbia University (USA). He is currently working as a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Environmental Engineering. His research focuses on development of advanced materials and catalysts for energy and environmental applications. In the past few years, he has been becoming one of leading experts for environmental applications of metal organic frameworks (MOFs) and their derivatives. He has also served as editors and editorial members for more than 10 journals. Dr. Lin has co-authored more than 365 SCI journal papers with a H-index of 58 and more than 12700 citations. From February 2024, Prof. Lin will join the Institute of Analytic and Environmental Sciences at National Tsing Hua University (Hsinchu City, Taiwan).

Read Kun-Yi Andrew Lin ’s Emerging Investigator article “Enhancing Degradation of Ciprofloxacin in Water using Oxone activated by Urchin-like Cubic and Hollow-structured Cobalt@N-doped Carbon prepared via Etching-Engineering” and read more about him in the interview below:

Your recent Emerging Investigator Series paper focuses on Enhancing Degradation of Ciprofloxacin in Water using Oxone activated by Urchin-like Cubic and Hollow-structured Cobalt@N-doped Carbon prepared via Etching-Engineering: A. How has your research evolved from your first article to this most recent article?

As I was trained as an environmental chemical engineer, I have been focusing the development of functional materials to respond to environmental issues and challenges from chemical and material perspectives. In my very first publication, I integrated organic-inorganic hybrid materials to combine advantages of organic soft matters and inorganic solid particles for capturing CO2. Similarly, for affording synergistic effects, the current study further utilizes benefits of inorganic metals and organic carbonaceous substrates to formulate this hybrid material comprised of cobalt embedded onto N-doped carbon with an intriguing hollow morphology in order to maximize active surfaces of catalysts.

What aspect of your work are you most excited about at the moment?

At this moment, I am quite fascinated by metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) that are a versatile platform for various applications. MOFs can be also tuned to become tools for dealing with conventional and emerging environmental problems.

In your opinion, what are the most important questions to be asked/answered in this field of research?

While designing and developing nanomaterials is interesting and promising, practical applications using nanomaterials would still encounter challenges in reality. Therefore, it is crucial to consider both reality and fancy to develop materials that can be feasibly implemented and operated in practical applications and still retain advantages of nanoscale features.

What do you find most challenging about your research?

The most challenging part of my current research is to integrate fundamental/theoretical perspectives with experimental investigations as the quantum computational chemistry is increasingly adopted as a useful tool to elucidate materials sciences. However, proper applications of quantum computational chemistry for understanding materials science and relationships between materials and reactions would be still quite challenging.

In which upcoming conferences or events may our readers meet you?

I will plan to attend conferences related to chemistry and chemical engineering. Therefore, it may be possible to meet up together at conferences held by American Chemical Society or Royal Society of Chemistry.

How do you spend your spare time?

I like to spend my spare time hanging out with my family to explore natural scenes and I also like to cook to prepare nice cuisines for my family!

Which profession would you choose if you were not a scientist?

If I were not a scientist, I probably would be an industrial designer to design vehicles or shoes to exercise my creativity and imagination.

Can you share one piece of career-related advice or wisdom with other early career scientists?

“No pain, no gain!” The academia is actually very competitive and you are competing with so many talented peers. Therefore, you need to really devote yourself and work hard to achieve your goals!

Environmental Science: Water Research & Technology are glad to welcome Luca Vezzaro (Technical University of Denmark) to the Advisory Board!

Luca has been working on modelling water quality in integrated urban water systems since the start of his PhD project in 2007, with a special focus on trace contaminants (micropollutants). This topic is intertwined with identification and quantification of sources of uncertainty, which has also been a common thread in his work.

His current research focus also includes methods for integrated online control and operations of urban water systems (including Model Predictive Control), validation and assimilation of water quality in sewers, and estimation of the fate of trace contaminants in circular water systems.

Recently, we launched a Data-intensive water systems management and operation themed issue, which is open for submissions until September 10th 2021. This issue is Guest Edited by Branko Kerkez (University of Michigan, USA), Kris Villez (Oak Ridge National Laboratory, USA) and ESWRT Editorial Board member Eveline Volcke (Ghent University, Belgium).

We’d like to invite you to attend a free live webinar with the Guest Editors, to hear them speak about the scope of this issue and answer your questions about where your research might fit into this topic.

Our Editor-in-Chief, Paige Novak, tells you more below:

“We always strive to make the publishing process clear, equitable, and transparent, and our themed issues are no exception. We are particularly excited about our themed issue on Data-intensive water systems management and operation, which is currently open for submissions, but realize that although this topic is of great interest for many of you, the topic can be confusing. To address this, on July 28^th 2021 at 10am ET/3pm BST, we will hold a brief webinar that we invite you to attend (or watch the recorded version) in which our Guest Editors, Kris Villez, Branko Kerkez, and Eveline Volcke, will hold a panel discussion to introduce the theme of the issue, describe the types of papers that they are looking for, and generally help researchers submit their best and most exciting work to this themed issue. We invite you to attend or watch the recorded version and think about how your work can fit into this issue and check back in early 2022 to read what promises to be a very exciting collection of papers.”

Click here to register to attend this webinar

Can’t attend? Click here to access the recording after the event

Click here to submit your question in advance

We are delighted to announce that Joel Ducoste (North Carolina State University) has joined the Environmental Science: Water Research & Technology Advisory Board.

Dr. Joel Ducoste is a Professor in the Civil, Construction, and Environmental Engineering Department at North Carolina State University (NCSU) and Interim Associate Dean for Faculty Advancement.  He holds a B.S. (1988) and M.Eng. (1989) in Mechanical Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and a Ph.D. in Environmental Engineering (1996) from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Dr. Ducoste is a board certified environmental engineering member with the American Academy of Environmental Engineers and Scientists and is a recognized expert in modeling water and wastewater treatment processes using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD).

His current research interests include physico-chemical processes in water treatment, computational fluid dynamics modeling, water/wastewater process optimization, wastewater sewer collection system sustainability, renewable energy, plant biosystems engineering, and solid waste process modeling.

He is a respected researcher and productive scholar with over 85 peer reviewed journal publications and another 90 peer reviewed conference proceedings and research reports. Dr. Ducoste has received a number of awards including: an NSF Career Award, a Fulbright fellowship, Visiting Professorships at Ghent University, South East University, and Yangzhou University, NC State mentoring awards, and most recently, elected Fellow of the Water Environment Federation. He has served on EPA Science Advisory Boards and 2020-2021 President of the Association of the Environmental Engineering and Science Professors. Dr. Ducoste also spent 5 years in industry at CH2M Hill as a senior process engineer and as an advance-manufacturing engineer at GE Aircraft Engines.

Environmental Science: Water Research & Technology seeks your high-impact research for our upcoming Themed Issue on Data-intensive water systems management and Operation

Guest Edited by Branko Kerkez (University of Michigan, USA), Kris Villez (Oak Ridge National Laboratory, USA) and Eveline Volcke (Ghent University, Belgium)

The water sector increasingly looks at intensified instrumentation, data collection and automation as tools for daily use. Still, a massive opportunity remains in fully embracing emerging methods and technologies such as artificial intelligence, data analytics, machine learning, low-cost sensor hardware, and edge and cloud computing. Indeed, sensing and automation technology has already infiltrated many facets of society today. As such, the time is ripe to evaluate the role of novel technologies for systems monitoring, diagnostics, and automation of aquatic processes and large-scale water systems. When leveraged, the water sector will do more with less.

In this special issue we seek to publish articles that report a significant advance in the theory, understanding, practice or application of emerging techniques and
technologies, including:

• Instrumentation, including state-of-the-art sensors and novel sensor concepts
• Data analytics and machine learning
• Low-cost and energy-efficient hardware for computation, and automation
• Advances in decision support systems
• Real-time monitoring and control
• Autonomy & Automation
• Privacy and cybersecurity
• Integration of data-intensive techniques, such as scale, model-based tools for
  real-time operation and management

The reported studies should be rooted in applications across aquatic science and engineering, including but not limited to:

• Chemical and microbial contaminants
• Water distribution and wastewater collection
• Stormwater infrastructure, green and gray
• Potable reuse
• Residue management
• Watersheds

All submitted manuscripts will undergo initial assessment and peer review as per the usual standards of the journal. Please quote “EWData21” in the “Comments to the Editor” section during the submission process.

Click here to find out more

Submissions due: 10th September 2021

Submit your work now: https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/esw 

Niveen Ismail is currently an assistant professor in the Picker Engineering Program at Smith College, an all-women’s liberal arts college. She received her MS (2011) and PhD (2015) in Environmental Engineering from Stanford University. She received her MS in Biology (2010) from Temple University and B.S. in Chemical Engineering (2003) from New Jersey Institute of Technology. The Ismail research lab examines the use of natural systems to improve water quality with a focus on the understanding the interaction of filter feeders with aquatic contaminants.

Read her Emerging Investigator article “Emerging investigator series: interacting effects of environmental factors on Daphnia magna removal of Escherichia coli from wastewater” and read more about her in the interview below:

Your recent Emerging Investigator Series paper focuses on removal of E. colifrom wastewater with zooplankton. How has your research evolved from your first article to this most recent article?

My research interests have expanded quite a bit with respect to the suite of contaminants we study in my lab, which now includes microbial pollutants, metals, microplastics, and nanoparticles. This particular area of research examining zooplankton interaction with microbial pollutants has evolved over the years to include more complex matrices and experimental designs that better mimic environmental systems.  My very first published paper looked at PCB maternal transfer in diamondback terrapins. I have been interested in aquatic contaminants since I started conducting research as an undergraduate.

What aspect of your work are you most excited about at the moment?

It’s hard to pick one specific topic, but I am really excited to have my undergraduate students back in lab after a long hiatus due the pandemic closures. Since I am a faculty member at a primarily undergraduate institution, my undergraduate students are the heart of my lab and are critical to the success of my research. With regards to specific research, we have restarted our work looking at various zooplankton species interactions with phages/viruses. We also are about to scale up our work examining the impact of silver nanoparticles on zooplankton to a mesocosm level. It’s always exciting to have experimental work progress from microcosm/batch scale to mesocosm scale and see how the kinetics change as we consider different variables and move closer to environmentally realistic conditions.

In your opinion, what are the most important questions to be asked/answered in this field of research?

Like many other scientists researching water technology, trying to improve water quality is a driving motivator behind all the research I do. Specific to my research focus, zooplankton are such critical species to natural treatment systems, but so little is known about their overall contributions to improving water quality and the effects of contaminants on their ability to filter feed. Ultimately, to effectively implement natural treatment systems, we need to be able to model and predict all the different factors that impact system performance. Often zooplankton grazing is excluded from inactivation and fate/transport models, so the mechanisms and the kinetics related to these filter feeders need to be elucidated.

What do you find most challenging about your research?

Balancing experimental specificity of working with a particular zooplankton species with broad applicability to the water treatment sector is a challenge we think about a lot. There is also the logistics of working with different biological species that can be challenging when it comes to maintaining cultures and dealing with culture crashes at the most inopportune moments.

In which upcoming conferences or events (online or in person) may our readers meet you?

I always look forward to attending AEESP and GRC Environmental Science: Water conferences. I also usually attend SETAC and ACS conferences.

How do you spend your spare time?

Right now, I have a 6-month-old so she is the focus of my time outside of work. I do still prioritize finding time to run in the woods almost every day and recently have tried to embrace New England winters by starting to cross country ski.

Which profession would you choose if you were not a scientist?

I always loved science so it is hard to imagine a different profession. I toyed with idea of being a veterinarian based on my love of animals so perhaps I would reconsider that option. Also, I could envision doing something related to running which I am extremely passionate about, but not sure what that would actually be.

Can you share one piece of career-related advice or wisdom with other early career scientists?

Give yourself time to get into a rhythm in lab and do not be discouraged if progress seems to be very slow (or non-existent). Also take the time to truly connect with your students and build a positive lab culture.