Research Area: Environmental Engineering
Research Solutions for a More Sustainable Tomorrow
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Dr. Michael Barber is Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering (CvEEN) at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, Utah. Michael has three degrees in Civil Engineering beginning with his BS from the University of New Hampshire, MS from Purdue University, and PhD from the University of Texas-Austin. He has over 30 years of experience in hydrology and water resources working in academics and in private consulting. His responsibilities include administering the CvEEN Department, teaching undergraduate and graduate classes, developing externally funded research proposals and budgets, advising and supervising undergraduate and graduate students, mentoring and publishing technical papers. He has taught courses in water resources, surface water hydrology, sediment transport, open channel flow, surface water contaminant transport, hydraulic design, and ecological modeling. Dr. Barber's research has field investigations and numerical modeling studies of water, nutrients, and primary productivity in rivers and lakes with focus on stream-groundwater interaction, climate change implications, and human adaptation. He is currently working on investigation of climate change impacts on water quantity and quality, understanding the impacts of bioenergy on water demand, and groundwater modeling of aquifer storage and recovery for increasing water availability. Michael is very involved in multi-stakeholder projects where consensus building and information transfer are vital components of the research.
Dr. Dowdell is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. Her research focuses on drinking water treatment and environmental microbiology, with an emphasis on drinking water microbiology and emerging pathogens. View lab website.
P.K. Andy Hong received a Bachelor of Science in Chemistry and both Masters and Doctorate in Environmental Engineering Science, all from the California Institute of Technology. Dr. Hong joined the faculty of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Utah in 1987 as an assistant professor and rose to the present rank of Professor. He is a registered professional engineer (P.E., Utah) and a board certified environmental engineer (BCEE) in environmental sustainability. Dr. Hong has been teaching engineering classes and conducting environmental engineering research throughout his tenure at the University. In his academic career, he spent a year at the Army Corps of Engineers Waterway Experiment Station, Vicksburg, MS where he conducted site remediation research projects through an Intergovernmental Personnel Agreement, and another sabbatical year at National Taiwan University where he has been a visiting professor since 2007. The University of Utah John Parker Teaching Fellowship award in Fall 2007 enabled him to pursue international collaboration for sustainable economic development. Dr. Hong is scientific advisor to the UTIER research organization based in China. He advised on several site remediation and technology demonstration projects in China and Taiwan. Dr. Hong's research interest includes treatment processes for contaminated waters, soil/sediment, and hazardous chemicals, for which four US patents have been issued. Dr. Hong is currently working on clean technology for developing oil sands, on rupturing of biomass that includes algae and activated sludge for renewable energy. He has invented the treatment of produced water and flow-back water from the oil and gas industry using expanding microbubble technologies. These works have resulted in an additional five other patents being prosecuted at various stages. Dr. Hong has authored over 60 journal papers and book chapters along with 110 conference presentations and seminars. He has graduated 7 Ph.D. students.
Dr. Ryan Johnson expands on Hydrological and Water Resources Management research at the University of Utah, leveraging the power of open-source software, an abundance of hydrological data, and machine learning to advance the skill of hydrological predictions. He is currently working on three key research efforts: 1) applying deep neural networks to advance the modeling of heterogeneous snow distribution in the Western US, 2) exploring multiple ML algorithms, including LSTMs, to extend the forecasting horizon of the National Water Model to a season-to-season resolution to support water supply forecasting, and 3) developing low-cost low-power snow monitoring systems to characterize catchment snow distribution within key water supply catchments. When not deep into Python and growing the application of Machine Learning in the hydrological sciences, Dr. Johnson can be found exploring mountains with his mountain bike and fly rod in the summer or digging snow pits and skiing in the winter.
Christne A. Pomeroy is an Associate Professor in the Urban Water Engineering & Sustainability Group in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Utah, where she teaches courses in hydraulics, open channel flow, stormwater management and design, water distribution system analysis, and urban watershed management. She has more than 15 years of academic and consulting experience in stormwater management, watershed management, permitting and compliance, modeling, GIS applications in water resources, hydraulics and hydrology. Dr. Pomeroy earned a B.S. in Civil Engineering from Michigan State University in 1995, a M.S. in Civil Engineering in 2004, and a Ph.D. in Civil Engineering in 2007 from Colorado State University. She is a registered professional engineer in Michigan.
Jennifer Weidhaas is an Associate Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Utah. Her research focuses on environmental microbiology, quantitative microbial risk assessment, wastewater based epidemiology, antimicrobial resistance, soil health and remediation, life cycle assessment, and water treatment and reuse. She graduated with a BS in Civil and Environmental Engineering from Montana State University and a MS and PhD in Civil and Environmental Engineering from the University of California-Davis. She is also a registered professional engineer in Idaho. Her research is supported by the National Science Foundation, US Department of Agriculture, US Bureau of Reclamation, Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program (SERDP), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and various state agencies.