What's New at WRRC, September 2011:
The Hawaii Water Resources Research Center in cooperation with the Virgin Islands Water Resources Research Institute (Dr.
Henry H. Smith, Director), the Puerto Rico Water Resources and Environmental Research Institute (Dr. Jorge Rivera- Santos, Director), and the Water and Environmental Research Institute of the Western Pacific in Guam (Dr. Gary Denton, Director) are organizing a conference on the general theme of water and wastewater sustainability issues in island environments.
We are inviting all researchers, managers, utility providers, students, and decision-makers with an interest in island water supply and sanitation to join us in Honolulu. The directors from all four island regional water centers will be in attendance as will researchers from many other regions. We are especially encouraging the participation of our colleagues from other islands with whom we generally have limited interaction owing to our geographical and political separation.
Visit the conference website at https://sites.google.com/site/wrrcconference2011/ for additional information.
Dr. Chittaranjan Ray Publishes Drinking Water Treatment Book
Dr. Chittaranjan Ray, professor and interim director of the Water Resources Research Center, co-edited Drinking Water Treatment: Focusing on Appropriate Technology and Sustainability with Ravi Jain, dean of engineering and computer science at the University of the Pacific. Published by Springer, this 262-page book focuses on four treatment technologies, namely solar pasteurization, membrane desalination, riverbank filtration as a natural filtration method and solar distillation for drinking water production.
More information can be found HERE.
WRRC Welcomes New Microbiologist Faculty Member
Dr. Marek Kirs has recently joined the faculty of WRRC filling a gap in the Center's expertise left by the recent retirement of Dr. Roger Fujioka. Dr. Kirs comes to us from a recent position as an Environmental Microbiologist at the Cawthron Institute in New Zealand. He studied at the University of Rhode Island, the University of Edinburgh in the U.K., and at the University of Tartu in his native Estonia. Dr. Kirs' recent research includes microbial source tracking using F-specific coliphages and quantitative PCR, tracking microbial indicators and pathogens in recreational waters, and rapid methods for the quantification of enterococci.
Dr. Clark Liu Conducts Short Course in Water-Environment Modeling in China
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WRRC researcher and Civil and Environmental Engineering Professor Dr. Clark Liu was on sabbatical leave this semester. During this time he was invited by the Taiwan Environmental Protection Administration to conduct a one-week short course on Water Environment Modeling and its application for environmental impact assessment. The workshop was successfully conducted in February 2011 at the lecture hall of National Taipei University of Technology.
The short course consisted of 5 parts:
- A Review of U.S. Water Quality Management and Pollution Control
Efforts in the Last 40 Years - Introduction to Water Quality Modeling
- Mathematical Formulation and Application of River and Estuary Water Quality Models
- Mathematical Formulation and Application of Watershed Models
- Mathematical Formulation and Application of Soil and Groundwater Models
2011 International Research Experiences for Students Project Wrap-Up
WRRC's Technology Transfer Specialist Philip Moravcik recently returned from Dresden, Germany where he was helping with the wrap-up of the 2011 International Research Experiences for Students (IRES) project that WRRC has been conducting in collaboration with the Hochschule für Technik und Wirtschaft Dresden (HTW). Dr. Chittaranjan Ray and Dresden colleague Thomas Grischek put together this program to give four American students the opportunity to study riverbank filtration in Germany. 2011 was the last of the three years in the program which focused on issues pertaining to potential impacts of climate change on riverbank filtration operations. Over the three years that WRRC collaborated with HTW twelve students from Hawaii and elsewhere spent eight weeks working and studying in Dresden.
Through the IRES program the National Science Foundation (NSF) makes it possible for undergraduate and graduate students to receive international exposure to science and engineering.
