EEMI Co-Director Joe Cascio was a co-author of an op-ed published both in The Hill newspaper and HuffPost (formerly Huffington Post) publication. The titles of the op-ed in the two publications are “The Federal Sustainability Effort is Worth Saving” (in The Hill) and “We Were the Federal Government’s Chief Sustainability Officers, and We Have a Business Proposal for President Trump” (in the HuffPost). Prof. Cascio authored the op-ed in conjunction with seven colleagues, all of whom also served as the Federal Environmental Executive in the White House under Presidents Clinton, Bush and Obama. The op-ed later was published in the GreenBiz Newsletter on April 13. The editorial is addressed to the Trump Administration and recommends continuation of the long-standing agreements across three previous Administrations on greening Federal government operations, including federal initiatives for recycling, greening federal buildings, transportation, acquisition, and energy sources, resource conservation and improving the efficiency of government operations. A copy of the op-ed can be seen here.
EEMI Research Scientist Kelly Scanlon and EEMI Professor Royce Francis co-authored a paper entitled “An Approach to Integrating Occupational Safety and Health into Life Cycle Assessment: Development and Application of Work Environment Characterization Factors" that won recognition as a top paper by the Journal of Industrial Ecology. The paper took second prize in the senior author category. In addition, Dr. Scanlon published in Environmental Science & Technology entitled “Conceptual Framework to Extend Life Cycle Assessment Using Near-Field Human Exposure Modeling and High-Throughput Tools for Chemicals."
Chakavak Kamran has been working at The Saba Group, Inc. as an Environmental Project Engineer for more than two years. Chaka reports that she is growing and progressing more in her field in her small company that is filled with wonderful people and is close to getting her Permanent Resident Card (Green Card.)
As reported in more detail elsewhere in this issue, EEMI Professor Alex Beehler was on a panel at a Club de Madrid /P-80 Conference in Little Rock, AK at the Clinton School of Public Service, entitled " A University Round-Table: Accelerating Global Clean Tech Innovation & Deployment.” As one of six panelists, Prof. Beehler described GWU/EEMI's efforts in this area.
EEMI Co-Director Joe Cascio recently presented a lecture at the National Defense University to the class of military and civilian government officials now attending its ten-month program in the Dwight D. Eisenhower School for National Security and Resource Strategy. His remarks focused on voluntary consensus standards for environmental and energy management systems from both operational and public policy perspectives. The Eisenhower School awards its graduates a Master of Science degree in national resource strategy. This was Prof. Cascio's 18th lecture in this yearly program.
EEM graduate Scott Bartos recently moved to Hanoi, Vietnam for a two-year assignment as a Foreign Service Officer with the U.S. Agency for International Development.
Prof. Scott Sklar, EEMI Energy Focus Area Leader, made a presentation on the "Community Solar Webinar" conducted by Sustainable Maryland Certified. Prof. Sklar’s presentation was on “Sustainable Energy Systems” in which he explained how municipalities, businesses, nonprofits and people can get involved in community solar projects and the technical challenges of such solar systems.
Recent EEM doctoral graduate Mohammed Qaradaghi and Prof. Jonathan Deason published a paper in the Journal of Petroleum Exploration and Production Technology. The paper is entitled “Analysis of MCDM Methods Output Coherence in Oil and Gas Portfolio Prioritization” (Vol. 7, Issue 2, April 2017). The paper explains the development of a triplex multi-criteria decision model to achieve an optimum allocation of resources to a portfolio of oilfields based on a number of criteria that pertain to the oilfields’ technical and contextual characteristics. Internal and external consistency testing results are outlined in nine possible scenarios through which a conclusion is derived confirming the competitive advantage of MCDM methods. Dr. Qaradaghi now is with the World Bank in Washington, DC.
On February 28, Kelly Scanlon (Senior Research Scientist, EEMI) made a presentation to the local sections of the American Industrial Hygiene Association and Alliance of Hazardous Materials Professionals at the Johns Hopkins Environmental Research Center in Rockville, MD. The topic of the presentation was the U.S. Department of Defense's proactive chemical risk management activities and current happenings on toxicological and regulatory risk drivers. Dr. Scanlon also made a presentation to the local sections of the American Industrial Hygiene Association and Alliance of Hazardous Materials Professionals at the Johns Hopkins Environmental Research Center in Rockville, Maryland on March 28. The topic of that presentation was the DoD's proactive chemical risk management activities.