2014 Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering Distinguished Lecture

The 2014 Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering Distinguished Lecture was delivered Dr. Linda Abriola on May 8.  Dr. Abriola is Dean of School of Engineering at Tufts University and a member of the National Academy of Engineering. She was hosted by Professor Jianmin Qu, CEE Department Chair, and met with many faculty, students, and member of the CEE External Advisory Committee during her visit.

Dean Abriola’s lecture was entitled “In Search of the Silver Bullet:  Progress and Perspectives on Contaminated Subsurface”.  It is an area that Dean Abriola has been interested in since her day as graduate student at Princeton University.  In her lecture, Dean Abriola discussed the problems and challenges chlorinated solvent contamination of aquifers posed to the environmental engineering professionals, regulators, and site managers for decades.  She, then, presented an overview of the interdisciplinary research designed to improve our ability to predict the migration and fate of DNAPLs in natural subsurface formations and to develop improved methodologies for site characterization and management.  While progress has been made over the past few decades, Dean Abriola is still in search of that silver bullet that could solve this chlorinated solvent contamination problems.