Civil Engineering with Dr. Maggie McNamara

NEWS

McNamara Receives EPA Grant to Understand Antibiotic Resistance Risks

Dr. Patrick McNamara, Professor of Civil, Construction and Environmental Engineering, and his research group are part of the team that received a $2 million, 3-year National Priorities Grant to understand and help mitigate risks from antibiotic and antimicrobial resistant microbes in wastewater and treated water effluents. The work, funded by the US EPA, is a team effort involving faculty and student researchers at Marquette University and the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee. The team will distinguish effective treatment processes for the removal of antibiotic/antimicrobial resistance and quantify risks associated with wastewater treatment systems. The researchers will integrate antibiotic resistance gene quantification and genomic and metagenomic-based DNA sequencing to determine changes in clinically relevant genotypes from wastewater treatment facility influent through the treatment train and ultimately to facility outflows to lakes and rivers. See EPA Grants

Clean Water Tech National Award Congratulations to Dr. Brooke Mayer, Associate Professor of Civil, Construction and Environmental Engineering, and Ph.D. student Yizhi (Johathan) Hou who received the American Water Works Association 2022 Membrane Treatment Best Publication Award for their article Sequential electrolysis and reverse osmosis to improve arsenic removal from water published in AWWA Water Science last year. They report on their technology to remove toxic arsenic from water, increasing removal from 54% to >98%. This work was performed in partnership with A. O. Smith Corporation, a leading international water tech company.

Read it here: CCEE graduate student, Paige Peters, continues to help lead conversations on our growing need for water technology solutions amid climate change.

Congratulations to Dr. Jaime Hernandez who has received a 1-year award in collaboration with Dr. Angeli Jayme, Research Scientist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign for the project, “R27-252: Impact of Commercial Electric Vehicles on Flexible Pavement Performance.” The sponsor is the Illinois Center for Transportation.  

Congratulations to CCEE graduate student Paige Peters and her team at Rapid Radicals Technology for being the grand prize winners of the 19th annual Wisconsin Governor’s Business Plan Contest.

Congratulations to Dr. Yong Bai, McShane Chair in Construction Engineering, has received a 6-month NSF grant in the amount of $50,000 for the project, “I-Corps: Automated As-is Facade Modeling of High-rise Buildings Using Drones and Artificial Intelligence.”

Read it here: Dr. Anthony Parolari's postdoc Kun Zhang’s research aims to understand and quantify urban groundwater dynamics. His latest paper focuses on how gray-green infra. interactions impact subsurface storm flows, a critical question in urban hydrology.

Read it hereDr. Patrick McNamara talked with Scientific American about how living with lead can create antibiotic-resistant superbugs. 

Tune In: Dr. Brooke Mayer joined WPR's Larry Meiller Show last week to discuss her work around phosphorus sustainability.


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