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Student Spotlight – Sara Glade

Five Questions with:

Name: Sara Glade

Advisor: Ashok Gadgil

Department: Civil and Environmental Engineering

1. WHERE DID YOU DO YOUR UNDERGRAD/MASTERS AND WHY DID YOU CHOOSE UC BERKELEY?
I did my Undergrad and Masters at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, Illinois. I chose UC Berkeley for my PhD for many reasons, but here are two: 1. there is a strong community of development engineering researchers and interesting development-focused research, especially related to water, 2. the graduate students I met when visiting seemed very supportive of one another, both personally and professionally (I still find this true to this day!)

2. WHAT KIND OF RESEARCH GETS YOU UP IN THE MORNING?
I am very passionate about research that has the potential to improve access to safe drinking water, is grounded in the reality of a community facing water contamination issues, and involves treatment technologies. I am very lucky to say that my current research fits all of these!

3. IF YOU COULD MAKE A GROUNDBREAKING DISCOVERY OR CHANGE A SYSTEM IN THE WORLD OF WATER RESEARCH, WHAT WOULD IT BE?
I think more work needs to be done in taking innovative ideas from the lab and bringing them to life at scale in the field. This is not an easy task, and certainly takes a different set of skills, but I think it is needed to ensure that we make an impact as a field.

4. WHAT’S THE MOST EXCITING CHALLENGE YOU’VE TACKLED WHILE STUDYING AT UC BERKELEY?
The project I am working right now is probably the most exciting challenge I have tackled. I am working to design, implement, and operate a field trial of novel treatment technology for arsenic treatment in a small, low-income community in California. I am planning to conduct interviews with community members as part of the work, and also am working closely with community partners. It is a very dynamic project that is pushing my skills as an engineer in the lab and in the field, and I am learning a lot and having a lot of fun.

5. WHERE DO YOU SEE YOURSELF IN 10 YEARS?
I hope to still be working on access to safe drinking water- whether that be from a nonprofit, government, or academic institution is still to be determined!

Student Spotlight – Aidan Cecchetti

Five Questions with:

Name: Aidan Cecchetti

Advisor: David Sedlak

Department: Civil and Environmental Engineering

WHERE DID YOU DO YOUR UNDERGRAD/MASTERS AND WHY DID YOU CHOOSE UC BERKELEY?
I did my undergrad at University of New Hampshire in Durham, NH and I applied to the M.S./Ph.D. program at Berkeley through CEE when I was a senior. There were a bunch of different reasons I chose Berkeley – location (i.e., wanting to take an opportunity to live outside of NH/New England while I was young), department/research group culture (I got the feeling from visiting and talking to people that research was more relaxed here than a lot of other places I was considering) and the type of research being done here (Berkeley is one of few places that does a really good job of integrating natural/ecological engineering with mechanical approaches to environmental engineering). Also, a large part of the reason I chose Berkeley was because I’ve always been impressed by how a public university can maintain a spot as one of the top research institutions in the country, not just in our field, but more generally in the sciences and I wanted to be a part of that. I’ve always wanted to be as supportive as possible of public education because it’s so important, not to mention the fact that my own experiences with private institutions have always left me with a bad taste in my mouth (for example, when I was applying to undergrad and found that private institutions tended to be far less generous, despite their enormous resources, than comparable public institutions – though I recognize this personal experience is not necessarily born out statistically).

WHAT KIND OF RESEARCH GETS YOU UP IN THE MORNING?
I really enjoy field research and feel much more exhilarated when I know I have a day ahead of me out in the field, whereas I often dread the days that I know will be spent entirely in the laboratory.

IF YOU COULD MAKE A GROUNDBREAKING DISCOVERY OR CHANGE A SYSTEM IN THE WORLD OF WATER RESEARCH, WHAT WOULD IT BE?
When I started my career in environmental engineering, I wasn’t planning on going in the direction of water research and was much more interested in climate change. If I could pair a discovery that relates wastewater treatment to something that combats climate change – some super effective carbon sequestration technology, for example – that would be ideal for me.

WHAT’S THE MOST EXCITING CHALLENGE YOU’VE TACKLED WHILE STUDYING AT UC BERKELEY?
I think the most fun research challenge I’ve had at UC Berkeley has definitely been mapping out elemental cycles at my field site.

WHERE DO YOU SEE YOURSELF IN 10 YEARS?
I’m not all that sure, but I think I want to be doing something related to research, maybe back on the East Coast with my family.

Student Spotlight – Scott Miller

Five Questions with:

Name: Scott Miller

Advisor: Kara Nelson

Department: Civil and Environmental Engineering

1. WHERE DID YOU DO YOUR UNDERGRAD/MASTERS AND WHY DID YOU CHOOSE UC BERKELEY?

I did my undergrad at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities in Civil Engineering and my Masters’s degree at UC Berkeley. When I came to Berkeley for my visit day, I felt that there was a really strong sense of community and fulfillment from the students I met. I was so impressed with how students came out to welcome the admitted students and how they really cared about their projects, their labs, and their community — it felt like it was all more than just people trying to get their degrees and then get out. Since I’ve been a student here, I really have valued this. People care about the environment and tackle it from all perspectives. We’re all in this together.

2. WHAT KIND OF RESEARCH GETS YOU UP IN THE MORNING?

A lot of things! It really depends on the day. Right now, I really love teaching class on natural treatment systems of wastewater and stormwater and looking at new bents on topics. This morning I woke up really interested in current stormwater infrastructure and how it’s being used and new potential treatment methods. What I like about what I’m doing at Berkeley is it’s something different each week, we’re doing really exciting research that touches on so many different areas, like policy, physical science, and social science.

3. IF YOU COULD MAKE A GROUNDBREAKING DISCOVERY OR CHANGE A SYSTEM IN THE WORLD OF WATER RESEARCH, WHAT WOULD IT BE?

Desalination! I know that we’re a long way off, but it would be really interesting to solve that problem. I’d also like to make a breakthrough in direct potable reuse — treating wastewater and putting it back into distribution. Places like California have limited freshwater supplies and if we could clean and return used water streams to our drinking supply by removing pathogens, nitrates, etc. that would be amazing.

4. WHAT’S THE MOST EXCITING CHALLENGE YOU’VE TACKLED WHILE STUDYING AT UC BERKELEY?

How do you effectively and accurately simulate anything in the lab? We routinely take the idea of full-scale distribution systems, hundreds of meters long, and scale it down to something we can fit in a lab. We also are looking at pipes that are 100 years old in the original system and our lab pipes are new, so it’s hard to replicate conditions, especially in the limited time we have in our labs (typically less than 2 years of research time). So, when we’re dealing with large or old systems in the field, it’s really tough to feel confident when you are trying to reach a conclusion with the resources in your lab — with new pipes and turning full-scale onto mini-systems; it’s just not perfect.

5. WHERE DO YOU SEE YOURSELF IN 10 YEARS?

I see myself moving to San Diego. I wanted to teach for so long, but my new inclination is to be a practitioner and get involved in large-scale solutions. I want to be a part of changing what’s being built. I definitely want to be working on water reuse and security in California.

Student Spotlight – Kyle Leathers