Achievements

Peter Alstone

School of Engineering

Dr. Alstone presented the results of a multi-year study of grid flexibility to the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy "Summer Study 2018" conference in Pacific Grove, California.

The conference paper is titled, "Integrating Demand Response and Distributed Resources in Planning for Large-scale Renewable Energy Integration."

You can download the paper at: http://aceee.org/files/proceedings/2018/

Yaad Rana, Josh Martinez, Toni Castillo, Karen Duarte, Peter Duin, Fernando Flores, Tanya Garcia, Jacob Hurd, Jackson Ingram, Amanda ‘the Destroyer’ Lagasca, Tony Mitchell III, David Rivera, Raymond Rios, Kelly Rodman, and Eunice Romero

School of Engineering

Humboldt State University's Environmental Resources Engineering students retain their trophy for the American Society of Civil Engineers Mid-Pacific Water Treatment Competition (MidPac), for the second year in a row, and fourth time overall, leading HSU to have the most wins in this competition. In addition, HSU took Second Place Overall in MidPac, even though the environmental engineering students did not complete in the Concrete Canoe, Steel Bridge or Geowall competitions! Tongji University (Shanghai, China) was awarded first place overall due to their first place finishes in the other competitions that HSU did not compete in. The HSU team formed a great sense of camaraderie with the Tongji team, as they supported and cheered each other on throughout the three day conference.

MidPac was hosted by Chico State this year, and was attended by most of the UCs and CSUs in California, along with other international competitors. The competition was extremely close this year, with the ERE's toughest competitors being Tongji (China), Laval (Canada), University of the Pacific, UC Berkeley and UC Davis.

Midpac consists of four main competitions: Concrete Canoe, Water Treatment, Geowall, and Steel Bridge. There are also three report competitions: Transportation, Ethics, and Water Research, each offering a cash prize. Each competition victory earns the winning school conference points, which are summed at the end and used to declare overall Mid-Pac winners.

HSU has historically competed only in the wastewater treatment competition. This year, HSU also competed in the water research paper category and mini-games. For water treatment competition, the team dedicated an enormous amount of effort into each of the scored categories to earn First Place in Water Treatment:
Construction (Second Place)
Poster Presentation (Tie for First Place)
Powerpoint Presentation (First Place)
Design Report (First Place)
Water Quality (First place).

For the Water Research Report competition, ERE student Peter Duin received a unanimous first place finish in both design report and oral presentation. HSU also won the Scavenger Hunt.

ERE students Yaad Rana and Josh Martinez co-chaired the preparation for Mid-Pac. Other participants were Toni Castillo, Karen Duarte, Peter Duin, Fernando Flores, Tanya Garcia, Jacob Hurd, Jackson Ingram, Amanda ‘the Destroyer’ Lagasca, Tony Mitchell III, David Rivera, Raymond Rios, Kelly Rodman, and Eunice Romero. The students are especially grateful the guidance and feedback from Professors Brad Finney and Margaret Lang.

Dr. Kerri Hickenbottom and Dr. Leslie Miller-Robbie

School of Engineering

Assistant professor Kerri Hickenbottom and visiting professor Leslie Miller-Robbie co-authored an article on a techno-economic assessment of a closed-loop osmotic heat engine published in the Journal of Membrane Science.
Full article: http://doi.org/10.1016/j.memsci.2017.04.034

Yaad Rana, Marcela Jimenez, and Joshua Martinez

School of Engineering

For the last 16 years, student teams from the HSU Environmental Resources Engineering (ERE) department have participated in a four day long math modeling competition. The competition consists of the Mathematical Modeling Contest (MCM) and Interdisciplinary Contest in Modeling (ICM) sponsored by the Consortium for Mathematics and Its Applications (COMAP). Competing against nearly 17,000 teams from thousands of universities, each team produced a report summarizing their solution to one of six possible problems.

This year, a record six ERE student teams entered in the competition that began on Thursday evening, January 19 and ended on Monday evening, January 23. Four of the six ERE teams were awarded the score of Honorable Mention, with fewer than 12% of the other teams scoring higher, and approximately 50% of the other teams scoring lower. One team received a ranking of Meritorious Winners, with fewer than 1% of the teams scoring higher. Finally, the team of Yaad Rana, Marcela Jimenez, and Joshua Martinez received the highest ranking possible, Outstanding Winner. This team also received the Rachel Carson award and the Sigma Scholarship award which provides a $3,000 prize to each team member.

Mathew Nyberg, Brian Draeger, Brian Weekly, Eileen Cashman, & Michael Love

School of Engineering

"Analysis of Vortex Pool-and-Chute Fishway" published in the American Journal for Undergraduate Research, Dec 2016 Volume 13 Issue 4. http://www.ajuronline.org/current-edition/.

Brian Draeger, Mat Nyberg, and Brian Weekly completed this research while pursuing B.S. degrees in Environmental Resources
Engineering. The analysis presented in this paper was conducted as a semester project for a River Hydraulics course instructed
by Dr. Eileen Cashman. The students’ interest and effort toward this project has continued beyond their course work under the
direction of Dr. Cashman and Dr. Margaret Lang.

Emily Klee, Aaron Kent, Jake Coniglione, Daniel Burgett, Heidi Otten, Jason McMack, Patrick Hasset, Jax Gill, Jake Burns

School of Engineering

Again this winter, the Consortium for Mathematics and Its Applications (COMAP) sponsored the annual Mathematical Modeling Contest (MCM) and Interdisciplinary Contest in Modeling (ICM). Student teams from the HSU Environmental Resources Engineering (ERE) department have participated in this four day long contest for the last 15 years, and did so again this year. Competing against over 12,000 teams from thousands of universities, each team produced a report summarizing their solution to one of six possible problems.

This year, three ERE student teams entered in the competition that began on Thursday evening, January 28, and ended on Monday evening, February 1. The team consisting of Emily Klee, Aaron Kent, and Jake Coniglione, and the team consisting of Daniel Burgett, Heidi Otten, and Jason McMack, selected a problem that required understanding the drivers of water scarcity as they created intervention strategies for a region of the world to mitigate the water crisis. Both teams' reports were awarded the score of Meritorious Winners. Only 9 (0.3%) of the 3,209 teams working on this problem scored higher, and 83% of the teams received lower scores.

The team consisting of Patrick Hasset, Jax Gill, and Jake Burns selected a problem that required they build a mathematical model to determine an effective strategy for a person taking a bath to add heated water to raise the temperature back to near starting levels while minimizing the overall use of water. Patrick, Jax, and Jake competed against 4,094 teams and were awarded a ranking of Meritorious Winners, awarded to only 8% of the entries. Only 13 teams received a higher score.

Congratulations to the members of all three teams for their high achievement in this event. We appreciate your efforts, which bring recognition to the Environmental Resources Engineering Department and to Humboldt State University.

Josue Candelario, Kelly Fuentes, Jacob Hurd, Tony Mitchell III, Joshua Martinez, Noe Martinez, Cristina Olivares, Yaad Rana, Raymond Rios, David Rivera, and Eunice Romero

School of Engineering

Environmental Resources Engineering Department students' recently competed in the Mid-Pacific Student Conference’s (Mid-PAC) Water Treatment Competition. At the competition, Humboldt State took first place overall competing against Fresno State, San Jose State, Tongi University, University of the Pacific, UC Berkeley, Chico State, UC Davis, Universite Laval, University of Nevada, and Sacramento State. HSU students also took first place in the construction category, second in water quality, and third in presentation. Students who competed include: Josue Candelario, Kelly Fuentes, Jacob Hurd, Tony Mitchell III, Joshua Martinez, Noe Martinez, Cristina Olivares, Yaad Rana, Raymond Rios, David Rivera, and Eunice Romero. The conference and competition is sponsored by the American Society of Civil Engineers.

"Mid-PAC is an international competition with multiple categories, such as: steel bridge competition (teams have to construct a 20' bridge), concrete canoe (teams must design and race a canoe), and waste water treatment that we participated in this year. Humboldt has historically been involved with the waste water filter competition and is now tied for most wins in this competition with UC Berkeley, and Reno,” says Yaad Rana, a ERE student who participated in the competition.

“The competition started in 1998 as part of the conference, and as an environmental engineering school we always expect to do great in the water treatment field as other schools focus on other civil engineering topics,” says Rana. “The design for the competition at HSU starts with small groups of students creating filters and testing them at a local competition held by the local chapter of ASCE members. After this period we join together to try and create the most effective design to take to the international competition. The local competition is really just to get ideas out there from the students who are willing to participate from HSU. When we are all together we hashed out the final design and continued testing and preparing the design report and presentation,” says Rana.

The team this year consisted of four poster presenters (Noe Martinez, Cristina Olivares, Josue Candelario, and Kelly Fuentes), twp PowerPoint presenters (Eunice Romero and Josh Martinez), two operators (Yaad Rana, Ray Rios, David Rivera, and Tony Mitchel III), and one construction manager (Jacob Hurd). So everyone had the opportunity to be involved. Rana was the team Chair, along with Co-Chairs were Josh Martinez and Eunice Romero.

This year we won the following awards: 3rd place presentation, 2nd place water quality, 1st place construction, and 1st place overall.

“We all worked really hard and had a blast doing it. I am also relieved because I am confident that next year's team will be in good hands, since this will be my last time participating. The younger students now have the passion for the competition, and that is key for HSU's continual success at Mid-PAC,” says Rana. “We represented Humboldt really well (at one point Josh was separating recycling at the competition as the other schools didn't seem to care that they were making a huge mess overflowing a trash can), and we brought home the trophy which was actually created at Humboldt (a wooden toilet bowl mounted on a redwood stump)!"

Here is a Google Drive link to photos from the competition that may be used in Humboldt State publications:
https://drive.google.com/a/humboldt.edu/folderview?id=0B-AEKEKoaMHxRHVv…

Lori Jones

School of Engineering

Lori Jones, a senior student in Environmental Resources Engineering and Applied Mathematics received a 2016 National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP). This fellowship will support her plan to assess the environmental impacts of tidal energy conversion arrays. Jones will be comparing the natural variations in the sedimentary environment and sea-floor characteristics of test sites with the changes that would be caused by a tidal energy converter array. She will use a three-dimensional hybrid modeling approach, validated with a small-scale physical model, capturing near and far field effects of the flow regime and sediment transport.

Joanna Murphy and Ryan Gustafson

School of Engineering

Joanna Murphy and Ryan Gustafson, two recent graduates from the Environmental Resources Engineering B.S. program, just published a peer-review article in "Desalination." Joanna and Ryan looked at heat and mass transfer in membrane distillation, a novel process that can produce high quality water from waste heat. They developed a new model that helps scaling-up the process and validated it experimentally in the lab. As a result, a larger-scale membrane distillation system is now being constructed at HSU. More details here: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0011916415300837

Leabeth Mae Peterson

School of Engineering

Leabeth Mae Peterson received the SWE Outstanding Collegiate Member award by the Society for Women Engineers, honoring collegiate members who have made an outstanding contribution to SWE, the engineering community, and their campus. She will be honored at a formal ceremony at WE15, the world's largest conference for women engineers, scheduled for Oct. 23, 2015 in Nashville, Tenn. The conference gathers over 8,000 women at all stages of their engineering careers.