Category: Research

Environmental Science & Technology (ES&T) published the 2017 Reviewer Awards on November 7. Among the recipients is Assistant Professor Daisuke Minakata, who received an Excellence in Review Award recognizing his contributions during a single year.

DOI: 10.1021/acs.est.7b05472

Dr.  Minakata’s research interests include development of computational tools for various water and wastewater treatment technologies, innovative water treatment technologies, and sustainable energy harvesting technologies. He has published numerous peer-reviewed papers in ES&T, Water Research, International Journal of Hydrogen Energy, Applied Catalysis, and others.

The peer review process is inherently anonymous, and it is valued because this is how journals ensure that papers published meet their high standard for quality. The purpose of this international award is to celebrate and recognize the reviewers who went the extra distance to write reviews that were truly exceptions.

ES&T is an authoritative source of information for professionals in a wide range of environmental disciplines. The journal combines magazine and research sections and is published both in print and online.

In preparing ballast treatment standards, which a federal court ruled inadequate in 2015, the EPA turned to some of the country’s best scientists in the field to help establish a safe number of organisms that could be discharged per cubic meter of water while still protecting the Great Lakes and other U.S. waters from new invasions.

The only thing the panel could agree on is that the fewer organisms allowed to survive in a ballast tank, the better. Beyond that, they were at a loss because, they said, you can’t just pick a magic number and call it safe.

Unless the number you pick is zero.

That is the number Isle Royale National Park Superintendent Phyllis Green aimed for when she learned in 2007 that an invasive virus deadly to dozens of freshwater fish species was creeping toward her rugged, forested island in the middle of Lake Superior.

Green went straight to the captain of the Ranger III, the 165-foot-long ship that ferries park passengers to the island, 73 miles from its home port on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Worried that the ferry might suck the rapidly spreading virus into its ballast tanks while docked at the mainland, she asked if there were any way to disinfect that ballast before it was released into park waters. The captain said no. “What happens,” Green replied, “if I tell you that you can’t move this ship unless you kill everything in your ballast tanks?”

That’s when the brainstorming started. Green’s goal was to try to figure out how to make the Ranger III safe to sail — not in years or even months, but in a matter of days. She sat down with the captain, the ship’s engineer and David Hand, chair of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Michigan Technological University. Hand had worked on water purification systems for the International Space Station that can turn sweat and urine into tap water.

“This,” Hand told the group of the ballast problem, “is not rocket science.”

Two weeks later, Isle Royale’s passenger ship had a crude ballast treatment system that used chlorine to fry viruses and other life lurking in its 37,000-gallon ballast tanks, and then vitamin C to neutralize the poison so the water could be harmlessly discharged into the lake.

Read more at Discover Magazine, by Dan Egan.

Pengfei Xue (CEE/GLRC) is the principal investigator on a project that has received a $68,975 research and development agreement with Ohio State University. Martin Auer (CEE) is the Co-PI on the project “ECOHAB 2017 Linking Process Models and Field Experiments to Forecast Algal Bloom Toxicity in Lake Erie.”

This is the first year of a three-year project potentially totaling $206,907.

By Sponsored Programs.

Timothy Colling (CEE/MTTI) is the principal investigator on a project that has received a $114,089 contract with the Michigan Department of Transportation. Mary Crane is the Co-PI on the project “2018 Transportation Asset Management Council Technical Assistance Activities Program.”

This is a one-year project.

By Sponsored Programs.

Michigan Tech’s Rail Transportation Program was featured in the INFORMS Railway Applications Section 2017 newsletter. INFORMS is the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences. The article Railway Education for the 21st Century included an interview with Pasi Lautala (CEE) describing our program’s history and current activities.

Feature Article: Railway Education for the 21st Century

The prize for best student recruiting must go to Michigan Tech, which since 2010 has offered a residential summer rail camp experience to students in the 9th through 12th years (American high school). Michigan Tech is the scrappy underdog of railway education.

How did Michigan Tech become one of the top railway education centers in the United States? It all started with the current program director, Pasi Lautala, who came to Michigan Tech in 1997 as an exchange student from Finland. Faculty members Bill Sproul and Eric Petersen shared a mutual interest in rail, and took an interest in Lautala. In 2002, they invited Lautala back to Michigan Tech to teach some courses in railways and pursue his PhD.

The summer youth program is the jewel of Michigan Tech’s program. Founded in 2010, the program is unique at Michigan Tech, because unlike other youth programs at Michigan Tech, it attracts students from all over the United States (Michigan Tech is otherwise strictly a regional school). At its peak under NuRail funding, the program offered 100% scholarship and enrolled a capacity group of 25 students. Today, without NuRail funding, the program offers 50% scholarship and enrolled 14 students last year.

The industry has to change, it has to modernize. Pasi Lautala

Director Pasi Lautala says the student body at Michigan Tech is a good match to the railroad industry, because its students are very hands on, engineering focused, and outdoors oriented, “Railroad people need to drive big trucks and shovel snow.”

Read more at the INFORMS newsletter of the Railway Applications Section, by Steven Harrod.

Martin Auer (CEE/GLRC), is the principal investigator on a project that has received a $28,637 research and development contract from the Mona Lake Watershed Council.

The project is titled “Mona Lake Monitoring and Modeling.” This is a one and a half year project.

By Sponsored Programs.

Tim Colling (CEE/MTTI) is the principal investigator on a project that has entered into a $450,734 contract with the Michigan Department of Transportation.

Christine Codere (CEE) and Peter Torola (CEE), are Co-PIs on the project “2018 Michigan Local Technical Assistance Program.” This is a one-year project.