Achievements

Logan Baumgartner, Alan Ramirez, Xuesi Feng, Friedel Pretorius, Zachary Ruiz, Tahsa Sturgis, Dustin Fredricey, Matti Nylander, and Julian Quick, Joanna Murphy, Jacob Rowe, and George Corbett

School of Engineering

Each winter, the Consortium for Mathematics and Its Applications (COMAP) sponsors the annual Mathematical Modeling Contest (MCM) and Interdisciplinary Contest in Modeling (ICM). As they have for many years, student teams from the HSU Environmental Resources Engineering (ERE) department participated in this four day long contest. Competing against thousands of universities, each team produced a report summarizing their solution to one of four possible problems.

This year, four ERE student teams entered in the competition that began on Thursday evening, February 5 and ended on Monday evening, February 9.

The team consisting of Logan Baumgartner, Alan Ramirez, and Xuesi Feng selected a problem that required they build a mathematical model to analyze the quantity of the medicine needed, possible feasible delivery systems, locations of delivery, and the speed of manufacturing of a vaccine or drug to optimize the eradication of Ebola. Logan, Alan, and Xuesi competed against 5,356 teams and were awarded a ranking of Successful Participant.

The team consisting of Friedel Pretorius, Zachary Ruiz, and Tahsa Sturgis selected a problem that required modeling churn in an organization with the intent of aiding managers and decision makers to build successful systems for recruiting, hiring, training, and evaluating employees. The team's report was awarded the score of Meritorious. Only 12 (2%) of the 641 teams working on this problem scored higher, and 88% of the teams received lower scores.

The team consisting of Dustin Fredricey, Matti Nylander, and Julian Quick selected a problem that required building a model for sustainability and a 20-year sustainable development plan for one country on the United Nations Least Developed Countries list. The teams used their model to evaluate the effect of their 20-year plan on the country's sustainability. Teams searched for pertinent data and grappled with how economic development must consider ecosystem health and social equitability. Dustin, Matti, and Julian competed against 1,496 teams and were awarded a ranking of Successful Participant.

The team consisting of Joanna Murphy, Jacob Rowe, and George Corbett also selected the economic sustainability problem. Their team was awarded the ranking of Outstanding Winner. This ranking was only awarded to 4 of the 1,496 teams working on this problem. Joanna, Jacob, and George also received two additional honors. Their submission was selected to receive the Rachel Carson award, which honors an American conservationist whose book "Silent Spring" initiated the global environmental movement and whose work spanned many disciplines concerned with the local and global environments. This award is presented to a team for excellence in using scientific theory and data in its modeling. Finally, the team only one of two teams that was given the Two Sigma Scholarship Award, which provides a stipend of $3,000 for each of the three team members and a $1,000 award to the ERE department.

Congratulations to the members of all four 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.

Keith Parker, Anthony Barella

School of Engineering

Based on their demonstrated potential to contribute to strengthening the vitality of the US science and engineering enterprise, Keith Parker and Anthony Barella of the Indian Natural Resources have been selected to receive 2015 National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP) Fellowships.

The award covers $34,000 per 12-month Fellowship Year for Parker's and Barella's pursuit of graduate degrees. The GRFP Fellowship period is 5 years, or less if a student graduates and complete the fellowship before the 5-year period ends. Financial support is provided for a maximum of three years. Humboldt State will receive a $12,000 Cost of Education Allowance in lieu of all required tuition and fees for each of the three years selected by the students for fellowship funding.

Lori Jones

School of Engineering

Lori Jones, a senior undergraduate in the Environmental Resources Engineering department, recently received funding through the CSU’s Water Resources and Policy Initiatives (WRPI) and US Department of Agriculture to investigate osmotic membrane processes as a Watershed Management Intern. Under the guidance of her advisor Andrea Achilli, she will develop three-dimensional computational fluid dynamics (CFD) models and investigate membrane fouling for two different osmotic hybrid systems – RO-PRO and FO-RO. These systems, which employ reuse of wastewater effluent, are designed to reduce the energy requirement of desalination through renewable power generation (RO-PRO) or osmotic dilution (FO-RO).

Team Leader: Luke Halonen. Team Members: Julian Quick, Skira Brathwaite, Kevin Brenes-Melgar, Solomon Clark, Matthew Collins, Anthony Eggink, Grant Goddard, Lori Jones, Mathew Nyberg, and Arrow Walker. Faculty Advisor: Douglas Saucedo

School of Engineering

On May 8th, the team received the Honorable Mention (2nd place) award for innovative system design and excellent analysis in the Hydrogen Education Foundation’s 2014 Hydrogen Student Design Contest. The team designed a modular, drop-in hydrogen fueling station that can be installed in under a 7 days, and dispense 5 kg of high pressure hydrogen fuel in under 5 minutes. See http://hydrogencontest.org/ for more details.

Joanna R. Murphy

School of Engineering

Joanna Murphy was recently selected as one of the recipients of the 2014 North American Membrane Society (NAMS) Elias Klein Travel Supplement. At the NAMS meeting, she will present her and her co-author's paper "A Two-Dimensional Modeling of Direct Contact Membrane Distillation with Bench Scale Experimental Validation."

Brian Wallace, Tyler Martin, Aaron Perez, Ryan P. Dunne, Nicholas A. Campbell, and Zachary Ruiz

School of Engineering

The Consortium for Mathematics and Its Applications (COMAP) just announced the results from the 2014 Mathematical Modeling Contest. Once again, two student teams from the HSU Environmental Resources Engineering (ERE) department participated in this four day long contest. Competing against thousands of universities, each team produced a report summarizing their solution to one of three possible problems.

The team consisting of Brian Wallace, Tyler Martin, and Aaron Perez selected a problem that required they build and analyze a mathematical model to analyze the performance of the "Keep-To-The-Right-Except-To-Pass" rule in light and heavy traffic. The team's report was awarded the score of Meritorious. Only 25 (0.4 percent) of the 6,755 teams working on this problem scored higher, and 90 percent of the teams received lower scores.

The team consisting of Ryan P. Dunne, Nicholas A. Campbell, and Zachary Ruiz selected a problem that required building a network model for determining influence in a large co-author network and measuring impact within a set of foundational papers in network science. This problem required teams to mine a large data set and understand concepts from the informational sciences to build an effective model for these complex phenomena. The team's report was also awarded the score of Meritorious. Only 11 (1%) of the 1,028 teams working on this problem scored higher, and 86% of the teams received lower scores.

Congratulations to the members of both teams for their high achievement in this event.

Andrea Achilli

School of Engineering

Dr. Achilli recently published an article that introduced a novel application of pressure retarded osmosis (PRO) in seawater desalination. In the paper, PRO was evaluated in conjunction with reverse osmosis (RO), in a system called RO-PRO desalination, to reduce the energy requirement of seawater RO desalination. The minimum net specific energy consumption of the system was found to be approximately 40% lower than state-of-the-art seawater RO. Full article: "http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.apenergy.2014.01.013":http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.apenergy.2014.01.013.

Ryan Gustafson

School of Engineering

Ryan Gustafson, a recent graduate from the ERE program, received a Viterbi Graduate School PhD fellowship to pursue a PhD in Environmental Engineering with Prof. Amy Childress at the University of Southern California. He will be funded for four years to continue his research on membrane distillation that he started last year at HSU with Dr. Andrea Achilli.

Kathleen H Sienko, Amir Sabet Sarvestani, Lonny Grafman

School of Engineering

Amir Sabet Sarvestani and Kathleen H. Sienko of University of Michigan, with Lonny Grafman of Humboldt State University, presented an "Open-Source, Wiki-Based Medical Device Compendium for Global Health" at the Second WHO Global Forum on Medical Devices in Geneva, Switzerland.

Jairo Luque Villanueva

School of Engineering

Jairo Luque Villanueva ('15, Environmental Resources Engineering) was one of 33 students nationwide to receive a prestigious GRO Fellowship from the Environmental Protection Agency. GRO recipients are eligible to receive up to $50,000 over two years for their studies in the sciences and math. They also receive an EPA internship. Villanueva is interning with ERE professor Andrea Achilli. He is researching forward osmosis and membrane distillation wastewater treatment/water reuse. Villanueva previously served as a student assistant and tutor for HSU's Indian Natural Resource, Science and Engineering Program and as a summer research intern at the University of Minnesota.