Principal Investigators
Examples of faculty and their expertise that are available for the TFR Center include:
Johns Hopkins University
Geography and Environmental Engineering
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William Ball
Professor Ball is a professional environmental engineer with expertise in physical and chemical processes affecting pollutant fate and treatment, with particular emphasis on the fate of anthropogenic contaminants in aquatic environments and in engineered water treatment. He and his students use a combination of laboratory experiments, field experiments, and computer modeling to integrate of chemical concepts of aqueous speciation, reaction, phase-partitioning, and adsorption with physical concepts of advection, diffusion, and interfacial mass transfer in complex natural and engineered systems. -
Ed Bouwer
Professor Bouwer has extensive experience with microbial process engineering and bioremediation processes. His group works on factors that influence biotransformation of contaminants, bioremediation for control of contaminated soils and groundwaters, biofilm kinetics, biological processes design in wastewater, industrial, and drinking water treatment, and transport and fate of microorganisms in porous media. A combination of laboratory and field measurements are used to better define the transport and fate of both organic and metal contaminants. - Hugh Ellis (environmental systems)
- Markus Hilpert (environmental flow and transport)
- Charles O'Melia (colloid transport)
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Lynn Roberts
Dr. Roberts' research focuses on developing improved understandings of the mechanisms of abiotic transformations of halogenated organic pollutants, with an overarching goal of improving our ability to make accurate a priori predictions of the environmental fate of toxic organic compounds. Many abiotic transformations are important in their own right, and may dominate the natural attenuation of organic pollutants. A more detailed understanding of how structure influences reactivity in such reactions provides insight into analogous mechanisms of biologically-mediated transformations, and may provide insight into the features responsible for the toxicity of organic compounds. Under appropriate conditions, abiotic transformation reactions can be harnessed to effect removal of contaminants in groundwater, for example in iron-based permeable reactive barriers. -
Alan Stone
Professor Stone investigates the kinetics and mechanisms of chemical reactions in aqueous media. He is especially interested in interactions between inorganic species (e.g. dissolved metal ions, oxyanions, mineral surfaces) and organic compounds. Structure-reactivity relationships developed in his research provide the basis for predicting contaminant behavior and contaminant persistence. -
Mandy Ward
Dr. Ward's lab works with the metal-reducing bacterium Shewanella oneidensis MR-1. This microbe can reduce a selection of metals [e.g. Fe(III), Mn(III), U(VI), and Cr(VI)] during anaerobic respiration. Professor Ward and her group are particularly interested in how this bacterium senses and moves towards or away from metals in the environment.
Mechanical Engineering
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Charles Meneveau
Dr. Meneveau's area of research is focused on understanding and modeling hydrodynamic turbulence, and complexity in fluid mechanics in general. Special emphasis is placed on the multiscale aspects of turbulence, using appropriate tools such as subgrid-scale modeling and Large Eddy Simulation. The insights that have emerged from Professor Meneveau's work have led to new numerical models for Computational Fluid Dynamics and applications to model atmospheric dispersion of contaminants in complex urban environments using Large Eddy Simulation.
Chemistry
- Howard Fairbrother (spectroscopy)
JH Bloomberg School of Public Health
Environmental Health Engineering
- Rolf Halden (chemistry, biochemistry)
University of Maryland Baltimore County
Center for Urban Environmental Research and Education
- Claire Welty (subsurface modeling/hydrology)
- Upal Ghosh (modeling reactive transport)