An article co-authored by Assistant Professor Tiezheng Tong and graduate student Yiming Yin has been selected by ACS ES&T Engineering as one of the winners of the journal’s inaugural Best Paper Award. “Wetting, Scaling, and Fouling in Membrane Distillation: State-of-the-Art Insights on Fundamental Mechanisms and Mitigation Strategies” was chosen as one of the best perspective and review articles.

The winners of the 2021 Best Paper Award were announced in an editorial in the September 2022 issue of ACS ES&T Engineering, and on the cover of the journal published Sept. 9.

Since the Cameron Peak and East Troublesome fires burned more than 400,000 acres west of Fort Collins, more than 14 Colorado State University researchers have worked to better understand fire impacts on fisheries, water quality, water quantity and ecosystem recovery. Professors Ryan Morrison and Peter Nelson are co-PIs on an Office of the Vice President for Research Quarterly Strategic Investment Proposal that will leverage CSU’s potential to be a national leader in fire impact research and facilitate the development of competitive interdisciplinary grant proposals.

OVPR funded $30,000 of the $75,000 proposal to fill a need for more coordination across research groups to increase the societal impact of existing projects and set up researchers for larger transformative grant proposals. The Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Walter Scott, Jr. College of Engineering, College of Agricultural Sciences and Warner College of Natural Resources will provide matching funds, and the Geospatial Centroid and Matt Ross lab will contribute $15,000 in in-kind staffing. Ross is director of the Geospatial Centroid.

The grant will position the Geospatial Centroid as a catalyst for post-fire collaboration across CSU. The Geospatial Centroid, based in CSU Libraries, will host research workshops and an external conference, build an open-source interactive web application that connects all the post-fire data generated at CSU, and provide support to submit competitive external grants to NSF, NASA and DOE.

Following recent flash flood warnings in the Cameron Peak burn scar, 9News interviewed Associate Professor Peter Nelson about his research to help reduce flash flooding by dropping mulch on wildfire burn scars. Burned land is especially bad at absorbing water, Nelson said, leading to flash floods for years to come.

View the broadcast, which aired Aug. 14, here.

A new study co-authored by Professor Hussam Mahmoud calls for a more strategic and interdisciplinary approach to pursuing wildfire research and protecting vulnerable communities.

The paper, led by a scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and co-authored by 86 other fire experts from a breadth of disciplines, highlights the obstacles for fire science and provides guidance for investing in future research. The commentary is a follow-up to a five-day innovation lab, sponsored by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), that brought together diverse research communities in May 2021 to develop a roadmap for new research directions.

Published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) Nexus journal, the study outlines five key challenges to advance the study of fire. These range from promoting coordinated research to drawing on diverse sources of knowledge.

Read the full NCAR press release here.

Associate Professors Chris Bareither and Joe Scalia co-authored the lead article in August’s edition of Mining Engineering. The article, “Characterizing tailings professional labor demand,” is based on a study that aims to raise awareness of the growing demand for tailings labor resources and the need for collaboration within academia and industry to recruit, train and retain future tailings professionals. Former master’s student Louise Spencer, now at consulting firm NewFields, is lead author, and co-authors include alumnus Christopher Hatton (B.S. ’86, M.S. ’88), senior program leader at Golder Associates WSP, and Kelly Ward, vice president at Marsh Mining, Metals & Minerals.

The study estimates that as many as 18,900 qualified and trained personnel are needed to manage the minimum estimated 17,000 tailings facilities worldwide.

Bareither and Scalia are involved in two academic-industry partnerships to improve mining waste stewardship: the Tailings Center, a CSU partnership with Colorado School of Mines and the University of Arizona, and the Tailings and Industrial Waste Engineering Center (TAILENG), a collaboration with geotechnical engineering faculty at Georgia Tech, UC Berkeley and the University of Illinois. CSU also founded the Tailings & Mine Waste Conference, the premier technical gathering on the subject since 1978.

Read the article, “Characterizing tailings professional labor demand,” here.

Ph.D. student Brandon J. Perry was awarded third place in an American Society of Civil Engineers student paper competition in the areas of structural health monitoring, system identification, smart materials and structures, and structural control. Perry uses drones to take 3D displacement measurements of structures. He presented his work in June at the ASCE Engineering Mechanics Institute Conference at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland.

“I was honored to be given the opportunity to present my work and am grateful for the support from CSU,” Perry said.

Perry presented the paper, “Measurements of the 3-Component (3C) Dynamic Displacements of Full-Scale Structures Using an Unmanned Aerial System (UAS),” during the Structural Health Monitoring and Control Committee gathering. Perry’s advisor, Assistant Professor Yanlin Guo, and Associate Professor Rebecca Atadero are co-authors.

Alumnus Jim McQuarrie, Professor Ken Carlson, senior research manager Asma Hanif and an undergraduate student design team were involved in conceptualizing the state-of-the-art sewer-heat recovery system at the National Western Center and CSU Spur. The system produces clean energy from dirty water and is the largest of its kind in North America.

“This project opened my eyes to heat recovery, which makes so much sense when thinking about all the hot water we use in America,” said Natalie Thompson, who led the student team. “It made me see that we should not view wastewater as a waste, but as an opportunity. That really shifted my perspective as someone who has always been inspired by sustainability.”

Read the STATE story, “Hot take: This renewable energy project will make you love that dirty water.”

A student team from CIVE 103 placed first in the national competition, Engineering for People Design Challenge. Derek Campbell, Branch DeMersseman, Andrick Diatilo, Nick Doherty, Bretton Ronlund and Shannon Zurn won for their team’s “globally responsible design contribution.”

The team was supervised by Professors Ken Carlson and Tom Siller.

Research by Associate Professor Ryan Morrison is featured in a science news article by Eos, the American Geophysical Union’s news outlet. The article describes a study co-authored by Morrison and Geology Professor Ellen Wohl that was led by Richard Knox from CSU’s Department of Geosciences, who was co-advised by Morrison. They found that the National Levee Database accounts for just one-fifth of the country’s total levee count.

The research team used machine learning to detect the artificial levees that are missing from the database. The study, “Identification of Artificial Levees in the Contiguous United States,” is published in Water Resources Research. Read the Eos article about this research here.

The trio also published a study that found artificial levees cause complex changes in river-floodplain connectivity and can increase flooded areas in some rivers. That paper, “A river ran through it: Floodplains as America’s newest relict landform,” is published in Science Advances.