Mortenson Center Digest - Q4 2021 |
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Congratulations Fall Graduates! |
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Britta Bergstrom - MS in Civil Engineering
Pranav Chintalapati - PhD in Environmental Engineering
Jessie Egan - MS in Civil Engineering
Janice Higuera - MS in Civil Engineering
Chantal Iribagiza - PhD in Environmental Engineering
Anit Koirala - Professional MS in Global Engineering
Bryce Letcher - MS in Architectural Engineering
Kalley Matzen - Professional MS in Global Environmental Engineering
Jen Morin - Professional MS in Global Engineering
Anthony Pimentel - BS in Environmental Engineering
Kevin Pulley - Professional MS in Global Environmental Engineering
Mariel Sabraw - Professional MS in Global Engineering
Patrick Ward - Professional MS in Global Engineering
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Mortenson Visiting Fellows |
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Styvers Kathuni & Lambert Mugabo |
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Mortenson Center Fellows Styvers Kathuni and Lambert Mugabo arrived in October from Kenya and Rwanda respectively to meet with the Mortenson Center team in Boulder. In addition to meeting with colleagues, they gave guest lectures and shared their experiences and knowledge about the projects on which they collaborate with MCGE.
Lambert holds a master’s degree in Global Health from the University of Southampton and a bachelor’s in Applied Statistics from the National University of Rwanda. Prior to joining MCGE, he coordinated a trial for integrated advanced water filters in Rwanda and managed a household air pollution intervention trial studying the health benefits of liquefied petroleum gas stoves. He is currently a Research Manager at Amazi Yego, overseeing researching activities and managing the Amazi Yego team. Lambert is managing an MCGE-led research project evaluating the how trail bridges in rural communities in Rwanda impact economics, health and education.
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Styvers earned his master’s degree in Water Supply and Sanitation at Kenyatta University and his bachelor’s degree in Water and Environmental Engineering from Egerton University. He has worked for over eleven years in the design and management of WASH activities in Kenya and South Sudan through organizations like Caritas Embu, Save the Children, and Catholic Relief Services. As the Regional Director for SweetSense Inc., he liaises with donors, governments, NGOs, private sector partners and communities and leads the installation of water point monitoring sensors. He is involved in multi-year, multi-donor funded projects in Kenya, Ethiopia and Nigeria and closely collaborates with MCGE in drought and water related research work. Styvers has been working on several proposals aimed at raising funds to ensure that our sensor network in Africa is sustained and used by the government to make decisions to improve water services for communities in Africa.
Styvers has enjoyed the views of the Rocky Mountains and Flatirons in Boulder, as they remind him of the views of Mt. Kenya from his hometown of Chuka in Kenya. Lambert’s favorite things in Boulder have been the kind people, the great weather and hiking around Brainard Lake.
Pictured above back row: MCGE Fellows Lambert Mugabo & Styvers Kathuni; front row: MCGE Managing Director Laura MacDonald, MCGE Director Evan Thomas & baby Desmond
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2022 Rio Faculty Fellows Announced |
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Mortenson Center Director Evan Thomas has been named a 2022 RIO Faculty Fellow by the Research & Innovation Office (RIO) at CU Boulder. Evan joins 16 others in the 2022 RIO Faculty Fellows cohort comprised of the most promising faculty across CU Boulder. The group reflects the diversity of expertise, research and scholarship taking place across campus.
The RIO Faculty Fellows program supports faculty in achieving their research and innovation goals and promotes collaboration by “shrinking the campus.” The program aims to create a community of diverse, creative research leaders that drive innovation across the university.
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Kaity Mattos grew up in Maryland and received her bachelor's degree in Environmental Studies at Washington University in St. Louis in 2009. After college, she moved to the Mariana Islands (US island territories in the Western Pacific) to work as an ecologist and natural resource manager. There, she started learning more about stormwater management and green infrastructure. Kaity was asked to design low-impact infrastructure, but did not have the formal training to do so. She decided to go back to school for engineering and found the Mortenson Center. Her master's degree in Environmental Engineering turned into a PhD when she was connected with water and sanitation professionals in rural Alaska. Kaity worked in the field with the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium for four years to complete her PhD research under Mortenson Center Associate Director Karl Linden.
As of fall 2021, Kaity is a new professor in the Department of Environment and Sustainability with a joint appointment in the Teacher Education Department at Fort Lewis College. She helps teach science content courses to future K-12 teachers and brings high school students into college courses in environmental sciences with the Environment and Climate Institute
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Are you an alum with a story to share? Inspire current MCGE students!
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Janice Higuera is a PhD student in Construction Engineering Management pursuing a Certificate in Global Engineering. She earned her bachelor's degree in Civil Engineering from the United States Military Academy, a Master's in Public Policy from the University of Texas at Austin, a Master's in International Service from American University in Washington D.C., and a Master's in Global Management from Thunderbird School of Global Management at Arizona State University. Janice served in the Army for 26 years in the Engineer Branch. She left the military to work at a large construction management firm then returned as an Active Guard Reserve Officer to teach at the New Mexico Military Institute. Her primary role as an engineer was focused on facilities, program, and project management. She has worked extensively in the Middle East, Caribbean, and Central and South America managing environmental, disaster mitigation, and economic development infrastructure projects. Early in her career, she discovered the systemic roadblocks to successful engineer training and development projects - government policies, cross-cultural communication, and a lack of local economic development. The opportunity to attend the Inter-American Defense College with leaders from all of the countries in the Western Hemisphere forced her to hear their thoughts and perceptions and to face her own biases.
Janice is interested in policy and data-driven process improvement solutions specifically focused on military engineering construction partnerships with American Indian communities. As a member of the Mortenson Center, she is constantly inspired by her peers and their ideas for solving some of the overwhelming issues faced in this field. Janice is graduated with her masters degree from CU Boulder this semester. Her hope as she continues on in the PhD program is to leverage her experience, further develop her research capabilities, and ultimately contribute to educating and motivating future engineers to solve global issues.
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Ilham Siddiq grew up in a remote village in Aceh, Indonesia. Growing up, he was fascinated by the outer world, amazed by the cityscape pictures on the wall calendar or some foreign language on a condensed milk can. Then, the 2004 Indian Ocean Earthquake and Tsunami happened and took away his home and countless family members, including his mother. During the aftermath of the event and the three-decade-long insurgency war it helped to end, Ilham met with a few of the thousands of humanitarian workers, both foreign and local, who came to help with the massive reconstruction project. He was fascinated by their demeanor and language and they sparked in him a relentless urge to learn English. As he grew older, Ilham realized that his home was devastated to such an extreme extent, not because of the scale of the tsunami, but because his community was not prepared for it. He also witnessed many reconstruction projects in Aceh failing or causing harm because of their misalignment with local needs and contexts. This made him realize that there is much more to post-disaster response and reconstruction than sound engineering calculations.
Ilham’s experiences set him on the path to study civil engineering in order to learn how to build more resilient communities. While working for the Tsunami and Disaster Mitigation Research Center, he met a Mortenson Center alum at an international conference on disaster risk reduction held in Banda Aceh, Indonesia. Intrigued by his research, Ilham struck up a conversation with the alum during a lunch break. That three-hour conversation inspired him to become a part of the Mortenson Center. Today, he is a master's student in Civil Systems at the University of Colorado Boulder pursuing a Certificate in Global Engineering. He also holds a master's degree in Civil Engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology and a bachelor's degree in Civil Engineering from Universitas Muhammadiyah Aceh, Indonesia. Ilham’s favorite thing about the Mortenson Center is how members of the MCGE community are passionate about equitable and emancipatory global development.
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Gordy Zak earned a bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from The University of Illinois Urbana Champaign in 2019 and is now a second-year graduate student pursuing a Professional Master's in Global Environmental Engineering at CU Boulder. As an undergrad, Gordy sought a way to apply mechanical engineering to directly benefit people. His class, Water in the Global Environment introduced him to Engineers Without Borders (EWB). Gordy became co-leader of an EWB water distribution and treatment project for an indigenous community in the Manabí province of Ecuador that had lost its water infrastructure due to an earthquake. His work on the project included systems analysis, water quality testing, and coordinating with the local government and a local NGO. This project succeeded because a strong connection was made with the local partners, which left a strong impression on Gordy about the importance of stakeholder involvement throughout a project. Gordy’s EWB experience and passion for traveling prompted him to seek out a graduate program centered on environmental engineering that partnered with people in challenging contexts – the Mortenson Center was a perfect fit.
Gordy’s goal within MCGE is to learn more about sustainable WASH systems; in particular, what decisions during planning and implementation distinguish successful projects from unsuccessful projects. His favorite thing about MCGE is how easy it is to make connections with both students and professor, whether through pickup soccer games, the myriad of organized activities, or just around the office. He also enjoys that the entire program, in and outside of the classroom, acts as an open forum for discussion on critical global issues. Gordy is an avid geography and history hobbyist who loves trivia and hopes to experience as many corners of the world as possible through travel. His love of geography and history come in handy, as he is a co-host for Cup of Current Events, an MCGE student discussion group.
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MCGE Authored Publications |
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UV Light & COVID-19:Significant Findings |
Mortenson Center Associate Director Karl Linden (left) and postdoctoral researcher Ben Ma (right) teamed up with other researchers to make a definitive statement about what UV exposures are required to kill off SARS-CoV-2. In October 2021, their study was published in Applied and Environmental Microbiology and is the first to comprehensively analyze the effects of different wavelengths of UV light on SARS-CoV-2 and other respiratory viruses. The findings are referred to as a “game changer” by the authors - the wavelength found to be extremely effective at killing the virus which causes COVID-19 is also safe for public spaces. Of almost every pathogen the team has ever studied, the SARS-CoV-2 is one of the easiest to kill with UV light. The specific wavelength of Far ultraviolet-C, at 222 nanometers, is blocked by the very top layers of human skin and eyes – meaning that it has limited to no detrimental health effects to humans at the levels that kill off the viruses.
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The implications of these findings are significant. Karl imagines systems that could cycle on and off in indoor spaces to routinely clean air and surfaces. UV light could also be used to make an ongoing, invisible barrier between people in spaces where social distancing is not possible. |
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Pandemics, Conservation, and Human-nature Relations |
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Human expansion comes at the cost of the natural environment. Deforestation, overfishing, and assaults on natural habitats and biodiversity have caused some to ask the question: did humanity bring forth the COVID-19 pandemic? Is the pandemic nature’s revenge for humanity’s invasion? Mortenson Center Adjunct Associate Professor Gunars Platais and his co-authors argue no. While a result of the blurred lines between human settlement and nature, the pandemic is not nature’s revenge but an opportunity to adapt and counteract human exceptionalism.
In the new article Pandemics, conservation, and human-nature relations, the authors explore the nuances of how zoonotic diseases transform into humanity’s pandemics. Throughout history, the mingling of human and animal habitats has led to the spread of disease. Contrary to popular belief, the consumption of bushmeat is not the primary cause of disease emergence. Studies in South East Asia have shown that land use change and agricultural industry changes contribute most to pathogen spillover as a result of habitat loss.
The authors propose that viruses are an integral part of biodiversity and that humans should use the pandemic to inspire the development of behaviors that respect other-than-human beings. The pandemic has shown that society can make radical changes over a very short period of time. Waking up to the change that the pandemic has brought could prompt the establishment of a cleaner, healthier and more noble future.
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Watch and learn how Mortenson Center Affiliate Faculty and Assistant Professor Sherri Cook is building a more sustainable future, for everyone, through clean water systems. |
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The Mortenson Center wishes you a safe and wonderful holiday season. |
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Job & Funding Opportunities |
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CEO
Denver, CO
Apply A.S.A.P.
The Chief Executive Officer with Engineers Without Borders will develop an intentional strategy detailing short and long-term goals, funding strategies and action steps for developing partnerships. Frequent travel required
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Faculty Position - Earth & Environmental Engineering
New York, NY
Dec. 31, 2021 - Deadline to Apply
The faculty position at Columbia University, open to all ranks, seeks candidates in areas with a focus in sustainable minerals, metals and materials. The faculty member would address concepts such as novel and improved means for mineral extraction, mineral separation methods, mineral resource recovery for reduced carbon emissions, or the application of sensors and analytics to engineer better technologies.
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Mortenson Center in Global Engineering | University of Colorado Boulder |
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