EEM Student & Faculty News

Professor Joe Cascio co-Director of the Environmental and Energy Management Institute hosted a three-day meeting of the leadership of International Standards Organization’s Technical Committee 207 on January 8-10, 2018. TC 207 is responsible for creating and promulgating international Environmental Management Standards such as the ISO 14000 series, and this meeting laid the groundwork for the Committee's 2018 agenda for improving and creating additional standards. The 25 participating leaders came from Canada, the U.K., China, Japan, Germany, Tanzania, Colombia, Mexico, and other countries from among the more than 80 that make up the Committee.

EEMI’s Director of Sustainable Energy, Professor Scott Sklar, published an article entitled “Resiliency, the Electric Grid, and Renewable Energy” in the Spring 2018 edition of Solar Today. A copy of the article be seen here.

EEM Master’s student Shuqi Dong served a Spring 2018 internship with Sustainable Capital Advisors in Washington, DC. In her internship, Shuqi worked on issues affecting the sustainable infrastructure industry.

EEM professor Dr. Ekundayo Shittu, his doctoral student Ted Baker and their collaborators at the Idaho National Laboratory published a paper entitled “Optimal Sizing of Flexible Nuclear Hybrid Energy System Components Considering Wind Volatility” in Volume  212 (2018) of the journal Applied Energy.

Azrah Azhar Anparasan defended her doctoral dissertation on January 22, 2018. The title of her dissertation is “Humanitarian Cargo Transportation: Modeling Realistic Network Topographies and Decentralized Planning Scenarios.” Prof. Erica Gralla was Azrah’s research advisor.

EEM Assistant Professor Ekundayo Shittu won the SEAS 2018 Junior Faculty Teaching award, which was presented in front of the SEAS fatality in May 2018.

EEM Assistant Professor Ekundayo Shittu, in conjunction with doctoral student Ilke Deluque and Prof. Jonathan Deason, published a paper entitled “Evaluating the Reliability of Efficient Energy Technology Portfolios” in the Spring 2018 edition of the EURO Journal on Decision Processes. The abstract of the paper can be viewed here. Prof. Shittu and Dr. Deluque also published a paper on “Evaluating the Adequacy of Efficient Energy Technology Portfolios” in the EURO Journal on Decision Processes in February 2018.

Several doctoral students in the EEM family exhibited their research activities in the February 21, 2018 SEAS Research and Development Showcase.

EEM Master’s student Kushal Malvaina landed a 2018 summer internship with AECOM Technical Services in Arlington, Virginia.

EEMI co-Director Joe Cascio served as a judge for the Department of Defense’s Spring 2018 Secretary of Defense Environmental Awards, which honor individuals, teams, and installations for their continued commitment to protecting irreplaceable resources and ensuring the availability of land, water, and airspace necessary to sustain military readiness.  The awards recognize efforts to ensure mission accomplishment and the protection of human health in the areas of environmental planning, waste management, and compliance with environmental laws and regulations.

EEM Doctoral student Melis Gursel presented a paper at the International Environment and Energy Fair and Conference 2018 on May 2-4, 2018. Melis’ paper was entitled “Increasing Energy Efficiency by Prevention of Waste Heat Loss in Power Plants and Industrial Systems.” Melis also presented a paper in Brussels, Belgium at the COGENERATION EU Annual Conference on June 5-6, 2018. Her paper covered REC problems and how to mitigate system efficiency by waste heat loss in cogeneration systems.

EEMI Director of Climate Change Dr. Rachael Jonassen, presented an Earth Day talk 0n April 19, 2018 for the 1,600 residents of the Greenspring Village in Springfield, Virginia.  Her topic was “Climate Change: What We Learn from the Past.”  Dr. Jonassen’s talk was part of her service as a speaker for the “Climate Voices” program operated by the National Center for Atmospheric Research and the United Nations Foundation.

EEMI doctoral students Ryan Gabel and Dor Hirsh Bar Gai were selected as Research Assistants on a project coordinated by the GW Law School to help develop a means to facilitate the rebuilding of smarter, more sustainable electric grids following natural disasters that necessitate substantial replacement of the existing electric system. Dor and Ryan are identifying factors, favorable and unfavorable, that have previously resulted in or hampered “smart” rebuilds in prior cases (such as Puerto Rico and Superstorm Sandy).

Professor Scott Sklar EEMI’s Director of Sustainable Energy, published a letter-to-editor in the May 16, 2018nmisue of the Richmond Times-Dispatch about California's solar mandate. Prof. Sklar’s op-ed can be seen at http://www.richmond.com/

EEM Masters’ student Shuqi Dong won a highly competitive positon as a 2018 Environmental Defense Fund Climate Corps Fellow. Shuqi will be spending her summer at the Volvo Group North America. At Volvo, she will work with three manufacturing facilities in MD, VA and PA to identify energy saving opportunities for operational, behavior change and employee engagement. Because the three facilities consume approximately 85% of the total energy of Volvo Group facilities in North America, Shuqi’s work as a Climate Corps fellow will primarily focus on developing a model and tools to engage employees and promote behaviors that drive long-term energy savings at these facilities.

EEM Doctoral student Ryan Gabel is serving as a Research Assistant to EEM Prof. Ekundayo on a Duke Energy Renewables funded prefect entitled “Evaluating the Ecosystem of Microgrids in the Arctic and Developing Countries.” The objective of the project is to examine a variety of successful implementations of microgrids to understand the factors driving the success of technology deployments in environments without access to electricity. The lessons drawn from this exploration will then be used to prepare a template for the development and deployment of the technologies in other places, particularly in the Arctic and in developing countries that currently do not have access to electricity.

Prof. Scott Sklar, EEMI’s Director of Sustainable Energy, published the article “Post-Hurricane Infrastructure Reconstruction in the Caribbean Islands: When Business-as-Usual is Risky Business” in the February 17 issue of the Energy and Climate Partnership of the Americas newsletter.

Dr. Kelly Scanlon, EEMI Senior Research Scientist, participated in two workshops in Washington, DC during the week of March 12th: “Materials Life Cycle Tracking and Measurement Workshop” hosted by the EPA and the “Federal Life Cycle Assessment Commons Technical Working Group” meeting hosted by the USDA. Both workshops offered collaborative opportunities to identify technical and policy solutions for challenges in tracking chemicals and materials throughout the supply chain.