Opening: Dr. Margaret S. Torn
Featured: Dr. Monroe Weber-Shirk
Closing: Dr. Arup SenGupta
Opening Keynote Address
“Three Perspectives on the Global Carbon Cycle: Soil, Atmosphere, and Energy”
Friday April 21, 2017- 5:00 PM
Dr. Margaret S. Torn
Ecologist & Biogeochemist
Senior Scientist
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
mstorn@lbl.gov
Margaret S. Torn is Senior Advisor in the Climate and Ecosystem Sciences Division (CESD) and lead of the Biosphere-Atmosphere Interactions Program Domain at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. She is lead PI for three large DOE-supported projects: AmeriFlux Management Project, Belowground Carbon Cycling Scientific Focus Area, and Land-Atmosphere Interactions, and is co-PI for the Next Generation Ecosystem Experiment in the Arctic. At U.C. Berkeley, Margaret is an Adjunct Professor in the Energy and Resources, where she has taught classes on climate change impacts and adaptation, and a seminar on food systems. Margaret is an ecologist and biogeochemist who studies the natural carbon cycle and human impacts on the carbon cycle through land use, energy use, and climate change. Her research uses field experiments, isotopic tracers (14C, 13C), laboratory analysis, and mathematical models. She has published more than 100 peer-reviewed articles on topics ranging from the basic mechanisms of soil carbon cycling and ecosystem-climate feedbacks, to ecological aspects of bioenergy production, to strategies for climate-change mitigation. She is an internationally recognized expert in soil carbon cycling, seeking to understand the potential for positive feedbacks that amplify climate change on the one hand, and the potential for soils to act as a large carbon sink on the other.
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Featured Keynote Address
“Creating community-scale, people, and planet friendly, water treatment technologies”
Saturday April 22, 2017- 1:00 PM
Dr. Monroe Weber-Shirk
Senior Lecturer
Servant Leader
TCi Faculty Fellow
ACSF Faculty Fellow
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Cornell University
monroews@gmail.com
Dr. Monroe Weber-Shirk received his Ph.D. in Environmental Engineering from Cornell University in 1992. His experiences working in Salvadoran refugee camps in Honduras led him to found the AguaClara program in 2005 to invent sustainable water treatment technologies. He has guided the AguaClara team to invent a series of technologies that together make it possible to produce safe drinking water without using any electricity. He organized the AguaClara program to engage students to conduct research and create a free online water treatment plant design tool. He works to empower partner organizations that in turn empower communities to build, operate, and sustain their AguaClara water treatment plants. His research team is investigating methods to improve performance and reduce the cost of drinking water and wastewater treatment.
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Closing Keynote Address
“Development and globalization of Hybrid Ion Exchange Nanotechnology (HIX-Nano): Mitigating fluoride and arsenic crisis in water”
Friday April 22, 2017 – 3:45 PM
Dr. Arup SenGupta
P.C. Rossin Professor
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Department of Chemical Engineering
Lehigh University
arup.sengupta@lehigh.edu
Dr. SenGupta’s research interests include preparation, characterization and innovative use of novel adsorbents; ion exchangers; reactive polymers; specialty membranes in environmental separation and development of sustainable environmental processes. He is a leader in environmental technology research and education, and has guided dozens of graduate students to successful careers in engineering practice and research.
Dr. SenGupta’s award-winning research has expanded the field of ion exchange science and technology in solving critical environmental problems, and has led to the development of new classes of hybrid ion exchangers that have been incorporated into water and wastewater treatment processes globally. He heads an international, interdisciplinary effort to develop and promote a sustainable treatment system that provides drinking water free of arsenic to thousands of people all over the world. He developed and helped to commercialize the first polymer-based absorbent for arsenic in the U.S., a product that provides arsenic-safe water to well over one million people in both the developing and the developed waorld. SenGupta currently has seven US patents.
Dr. SenGupta’s innovations in environmental engineering and his collaborative work with university researchers and local engineers in developing nations have been recognized with a multiplicity of awards, including the 2001 Frontier Research Award from the Association of Environmental Engineering and Science Professors (AEESP); the International Ion Exchange Award from Cambridge University; the Grainger Silver Award from the National Academy of Engineering (NAE); the National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance (NCIIA) Sustainability Award; the Dhirubhai Ambani Award from the Institution of Chemical Engineers (UK); the Astellas USA Foundation Award from the American Chemical Society (ACS); and the Lawrence K. Cecil Award from the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE).
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