The American Water Works Association has announced the winners of its annual poster competition. AWWA’s “Fresh Ideas” Poster Contest debuted at the Annual Conference and Exposition (ACE) more than a decade ago as part of its students and young professionals programming.
Lan Cheng
Poster: “Compare and combine: PFAS removal by granular activated carbon adsorption and anion exchange”
Willam Fagan
Poster: “Kinetics and mechanism of ultrasonic defluorination of fluorotelomer sulfonates”
Tom Howard
Poster: “Spotting HABs from Space: Estimating Chlorophyll-a Concentrations Using Satellite Imagery and Machine Learning Techniques”
Lan Cheng 1st Place
Lan Cheng is a postdoctoral researcher in the research group of Detlef Knappe at North Carolina State University, where she earned her Ph.D. degree in Civil Engineering in May 2023. In her Ph.D. program, she developed a scale-up approach to predict the removal of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) by anion exchange resins from bench-scale column data.
Her research also investigated how properties of PFAS, anion exchange resins, and background water matrix affect anion exchange resin use rates. In addition, she studied the kinetics and mechanisms of PFAS uptake by anion exchange resins using bench-scale experiments and density functional theory (DFT). Her Ph.D. research was funded by the Water Research Foundation and the NC Policy Collaboratory.
William Fagan 2nd Place
William Fagan is a process engineer at Black & Veatch in Columbus, Ohio. He is a member of BV’s wastewater and biosolids process group. Prior to joining BV, William was a postdoctoral scholar at The Ohio State University where he evaluated ozone nanobubble treatment of Ohio lakes impacted by harmful algal blooms.
He earned a PhD in Environmental Engineering and master’s degree in Environmental Science from Ohio State. In his graduate research, he investigated mechanisms of ultrasonic treatment of PFAS. William earned a bachelor’s degree in Chemistry from SUNY Geneseo.
William's engineering and research interests include development of treatment technologies for emerging contaminants, fieldwork, and environmental analytical chemistry. He is originally from Long Island, New York
Tom Howard 3rd Place
Tom Howard is the founder of Resolve Hydro, a company using satellite remote sensing to detect changes in the waterbodies we live around, drink from, and recreate in. In his work, Tom uses a constellation of high-resolution satellites to detect near-daily changes in water quality parameters, such as chlorophyll-a concentration, in virtually any lake or reservoir.
Prior to establishing Resolve Hydro, Tom worked in the water resources practice group at Hazen and Sawyer where he contributed to various projects relating to climate change, water quality management, and drinking water treatment. He received his Bachelor's Degree in Environmental Health and Engineering from Johns Hopkins University in 2020.