• Currently Funded Projects
• Completed Projects

Currently Funded Projects

NSF ($598,000; Co-PI; Sept 2008) Engineering and Computer Science Scholars Targeted for Academic, Retention and Success (STARS) at the University of South Florida.

Description: The USF STARS program is providing 25 scholarships per year to academically talented and financially needy students to increase the retention of STEM transfer students through graduation, with emphasis on students from underrepresented groups, including women, minorities, and students with disabilities. This program offers a viable transfer pathway for students at community colleges (CC) and non-Engineering degree granting (e.g. dual degree) programs into Engineering. Also, this project leverages existing student enhancement programs developed and implemented at USF to improve the recruitment and retention of STEM transfer students through graduation.

EPA ($10,000; PI; August 2008 - April 2009) Water Awareness, Research and Education in East Tampa (WARE East Tampa): A pilot collaboration involving USF, Young Magnet Middle School and the East Tampa Community.

Description: (1) Stormwater retention ponds play a vital role in flood and pollution control in communities throughout Florida and volunteer community programs have been successful at reducing local pollutant loads and maintaining pond health. Community funded revitalization programs in East Tampa, an economically disadvantaged urban area, include beatification efforts of stormwater ponds, but do not address water quality, maintenance or potential impacts on the pond and community members (from fish consumption) posed by increased accessibility and use of the ponds; (2) This P3 award will establish a collaborative mechanism involving the University of South Florida, Young Middle Magnet School and East Tampa community members that effectively raises environmental awareness in East Tampa using stormwater ponds as an initial focal point; (3) Through community education and awareness, local pollutant inputs to storm water will be reduced; an activity that not only impacts local pond water quality, but also water quality in the Tampa Bay; (4) Outputs from this project are: a) curriculum developed for students at Young Middle Magnet; b) stormwater retention pond demonstration modules and tour; c) baseline water quality data collection for three retention ponds in East Tampa and establishment of a sustainable water monitoring program; d) preliminary assessment of sediment heavy metal concentrations; e) a report with proposed activities needed to advance this project. Participant surveys will be conducted at various times over the course of the project to evaluate its effectiveness; and (5) P3 concepts are weaved into WARE’s educational program for USF College of Engineering students, Young Magnet’s middle school students and East Tampa community members.

ECT ($32,000; PI, Co-PI's Dr. Mark Stewart and Dr. Jeff Cunningham). GEOCHEMICAL MODELING OF WASTE STREAM INJECTION INTO DEEP AQUIFERS.

Description: We will use chemical equilibrium modeling to determine the speciation of a series of inorganic ions/compounds after injection of select waste streams into deep aquifers. Waste stream data will be combined with aquifer data (actual and assumed) to provide model inputs (e.g. species, solids present, concentrations, temperature, pH, pe, I) for the Geochemists Workbench software. Given the ranges of conditions likely to exist in a given aquifer and variability in the waste stream, models will be generated for ranges of appropriate conditions (e.g. solids present, pH, degree of mixing between injected water and native brine).

USF Patel Center for Global Solutions ($15,000; PI; Patel Faculty Fellow Award) Ecotourism.

USF Sustainable Healthy Communities - Water ($392,631; Co-PI with Amy stuart (College of Public Health) and Fenda Akiwumi (Geography); May 2007 - May 2009) Understanding and Promoting Sustainability Related to Mercury Exposure through Integrated Research, Graduate Education and Community.

Description: The specific aim of project research is to develop understanding of the factors
affecting community sustainability related to mercury use, contamination, and human exposures.
To address this aim, the focus of this proposal will be on two study sites, the Tampa Bay area
and Guyana. As examples of a developed and developing area, these sites will provide insights
into the comparative scientific and social aspects affecting sustainability related to mercury.
These sites both have known mercury contamination issues that lead to potentially unsafe
exposures, including high mercury levels in fish. In addition, local sources of mercury
contamination differ between these sites and are representative of the largest anthropogenic
sources of mercury to the global environment. Waste incineration and power generation are the
largest sources in Tampa, while artisinal gold mining is the largest source in Guyana. In
addition, these sites were selected for ease of accessibility due to their location and established
research and cultural connections of the involved faculty. In this work, we plan to address the following scientific questions:

1. What are the local sources of mercury contamination leading to human exposure at each
   study site? What portion of sources are local versus long-range?
2. What is distribution of mercury in different environmental media at each study site?
3. How does environmental cycling affect contamination and exposures at each site?
4. What social, political, economic, and/or cultural factors in each study area have historically and currently lead to mercury use and exposures? THRUST AREA: Sustainable Healthy Communities: Water
5. What are the socio-economic and cultural costs of contamination to local communities?
6. What are the health disparities implications of continued mercury use?
7. Which subpopulations are benefiting from continued used and which are disproportionately exposed?
8. What do exposed communities know / feel about their use and exposure to mercury?
9. How do exposures and factors affecting exposures differ for the developed and developing
   country sites? What broader implications does this provide?
10. What can be done to ensure healthy practices in mercury use while providing for sustainable
    communities?

Completed Projects

National Science Foundation’s Nanoscale Exploratory Research Award: ($100,000; PI. Co-PI with Vinay Gupta (Chemical ngineering); September 2005 – August 2007) Engineering smart nanoparticle-polymer composites for environmental remediation.  

Description: This proposed NER project will investigate the catalytic and photocatalytic application of hybrids of transparent, cross-linked, porous thermally responsive polymers (< 1mm) and selective, nano-sized metal and mineral oxides (1-50 nm) to the remediation of aqueous environmental contaminants. The transparency of the polymeric microspheres and the aqueous environment within the gel makes it an ideal phase to immobilize and suspend particles for photocatalytic transformations. The polymer microspheres swell with water at low temperatures and expel water at high temperatures. This thermal phase separation response in combination with the sub-micron (100-1000 nm) size of the gel will enable simple separation approaches to recover the polymer-particle nanocomposite for recycling. No past studies have utilized such a concept and the proposed NER project is exploratory in nature.  

Florida Center for Solid and Hazardous Waste ($34,594; PI; September 2005 - December 2006). The feasibility of removing inorganic arsenic from landfill leachate via sorption to mineral oxide surfaces. Landfillinfosite.com

Objectives:

1. To identify Class 1 landfills in Florida with potential leachate disposal problems due to arsenic and select experimental conditions based on leachate characterization information,
2. To determine the influence of geochemical conditions (pH, temperature, ionic strength, competing ions) on the removal of arsenic from landfill leachate solutions using mineral oxide surfaces
3. To establish an equilibrium modeling dataset that can be used to predict the feasibility of arsenic removal under a range of geochemical conditions.

USF New Researcher Award ($10,000; PI. February 2005 – February 2006)A preliminary study of the heavy metal distribution in water and sediment close to Guyana’s OMAI gold mine.

Description: This project aims to conduct preliminary studies on heavy metal concentrations in the aquatic environment impacted by the OMAI gold mine, the largest open pit mine in South America. Situated in the tropical rainforest region of Guyana, OMAI uses a cyanide leaching procedure that poses potential environmental hazards and risks to local aquatic and human communities along the Essequibo river. None of the water sampling data reported since the opening of the mine in 1995 reports arsenic concentrations although it is present in the ore. This work will provide information needed to test the hypothesis that exposure to arsenic from the OMAI mine could be affecting human health. River water and sediment samples will be collected and analyzed for arsenic and other heavy metal concentrations.