Environment Institute

Dr. David Pines, Ph.D.
Director, Environment Institute

The Engineering Application Center's Environmental Institute seeks to work with industry, water utilities, and government organizations in developing solutions to improve water and air quality and minimize the impact of solid and hazardous waste on our environment.

Applied research projects are worked on collaboratively between the sponsoring organization, faculty, graduate, and undergraduate students. Project-based learning is integrated into the curriculum with our students having the opportunity to participate in these projects throughout their four years of undergraduate education. Students also have the opportunity to work as student interns for longer term projects that can not be completed in one semester.

The scope of undergraduate projects has ranged from performing reservoir water quality studies to developing procedure for concentrating filter backwash water to developing an instrument to automatically measure the readily biodegradable fraction of a wastewater.

Graduate projects have included developing an emergency preparedness procedure for minimizing the environmental impact of hazardous material to reducing volatile emissions from a paint coating process. Many of these projects have resulted in students presenting their findings at technical conferences.

Looking at Iron Contaminated Water