Environmental Engineering & Toxicology

Fellow Story

Settlement proposed to clean up mercury in the Penobscot River

Karen Merritt was part of an environmental engineering study resulting in a proposed settlement to clean up mercury contamination in the Penobscot River.
September 22, 2021
Fellow Story

TED Talk by Nithya Ramanathan - The problem of vaccine spoilage

Refrigerators do much more than store your groceries -- they're also vital to preserving and distributing vaccines. Illustrating the realities of (and threats to) global vaccine supply chains, technologist, TED Fellow and Switzer Fellow Nithya Ramanathan describes how smart sensors placed in fridges that store medical supplies can provide crucial, real-time data and ensure people get the life-saving care they need.
August 1, 2021
Fellow

Aaron Maruzzo

2021 Fellow
Aaron Maruzzo is a MPH graduate from the Environmental Health Sciences department at UC Berkeley School of Public Health. He joined UC Berkeley after three years of working as the Water Lab Analyst for the municipal water company in the U.S...
Fellow

Eshaan Patheria

2021 Fellow
Eshaan Patheria is a PhD candidate in Chemistry at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). His research aims to develop low-cost, energy-dense and long-lasting next generation batteries for renewable energy storage at scale...
Fellow, Fellows Advisory Committee

Timnit Kefela

2021 Fellow
Timnit Kefela is an environmental scientist, organizer and educator who seeks to better understand (micro)plastic pathways, fates and impacts in effort to inform and design liberatory infrastructural solutions for pollution mitigation and...
Fellow Story

Nithya Ramanathan selected as a 2021 TED Fellow

Nithya Ramanathan, Founder and CEO of Nexleaf, is shaping the future by keeping vaccines safe.
April 28, 2021
Fellow Story

Miner's research on PFAS on Everest featured in GQ magazine

In April of 2019, a team of scientific researchers and documentarians arrived at Mount Everest’s southern basecamp in Nepal to measure the impacts of climate change and human activity on the world’s tallest mountain. The pollution team, led by University of Maine Assistant Professor Kimberley Miner, lugged heavy scientific equipment up the most popular ascent route. At each stop, Miner's team took samples of snow, the same snow climbers were boiling and drinking, the same snow that melted each summer and provided water for people living in the valleys below.
February 6, 2021
Fellow Story

Richter publishes on how ignorance is produced through regulatory structure in the case of PFAS

Lauren Richter, Alissa Cordner & Phil Brown, Sociological Perspectives Producing Ignorance Through Regulatory Structure: The Case of Per-and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances (PFAS) Abstract:
November 7, 2020
Fellow Story

Clean water and sanitation: How design can influence behavioral changes

Jeannette Laramee writes that designs for clean water and sanitation infrastructure in developing areas should encourage use to achieve the goal of creating healthy communities.
November 2, 2020
Fellow Story

Vaquero quoted in LA Times on Exide bankruptcy and environmental cleanup uncertainty

For decades, families across a swath of southeast Los Angeles County have lived in an environmental disaster zone, their kids playing in yards polluted with brain-damaging lead while they wait on a state agency to remove contaminated soil from thousands of homes. Now, the cleanup faces even greater uncertainty. A bankruptcy plan by Exide Technologies, which operated the now-closed lead-acid battery smelter in Vernon that is blamed for the pollution, would allow the site to be abandoned with the remediation unfinished.
October 19, 2020