Environmental and Energy Management Institute co-Director Joe Cascio presented an invited lecture at the National Defense University in January 2016. Prof. Cascio’s remarks focused on voluntary consensus standards for environmental and energy management (ISO 14000 and 50000 series) from both operational and public policy perspectives to a class of military and civilian government officials attending a Master of Science degree program in the Dwight D. Eisenhower School for National Security and Resource Strategy. The revised ISO 14001 incorporates new provisions for enhanced treatment of public disclosure, supply chain management, continual improvement of performance, and greater responsiveness to the needs and concerns of the organization’s surrounding community. From 1991 to 2003, Professor Cascio led the U.S. delegation that negotiated the ISO 14000 series of over two dozen international environmental management standards including those for environmental labeling, life-cycle analysis, performance evaluation, and greenhouse gas accounting among others.
EEM doctoral student Chakavak Kamran recently began a new position with a privately owned company named The Saba Group in the Washington, DC area. Chaka has been undertaking a variety of tasks ranging from Environmental Site Assessment, construction management and financial analysis and management.
EEM Master’s student Shihong Du accepted a Curricular Practical Training position as a paid Intern with the D+R International Company of Silver Spring, Maryland, where he started in October 2015. Shihong’s internship enables him to work on complex and multi-layered projects with other members of an interdisciplinary team. He is undertaking projects involving statistics and data analysis with various projection models that utilize his strong technical skills and ability to understand very intricate details in a quick time frame.
In January 2016, EEM Professor Rachael Jonassen delivered an invited lecture entitled “Parsing Presidential Candidates’ on Climate Change” as part of the Inside Washington Academic Seminar at the Washington Center for Internships and Academic Seminars.
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| Junchao at NDRC headquarters in Beijing |
Recent EEM Master of Science graduate Junchao Gu accepted an offer in October 2015 from the Energy Research Institute of the National Development and Research Commission in Beijing, China. The Energy Research Institute is the top energy research organization in China. Junchao is responsible for a pilot project named the "Sustainable Low Carbon City Development," which is being undertaken by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and sponsored by the Energy Foundation of San Francisco. The project recently selected 11 cities in the central and northern parts of China to undertake a series of actions to reduce municipal greenhouse gas footprints. Previously, Junchao served as a consultant on a waste heat recovery project conducted by both the Institute of Industrial Productivity and the International Finance Corporation in Washington, DC.
EEM doctoral candidate Iryna Payosova participated in the National Conference and Global Forum on Science, Policy and the Environment, held in January 2016. The topic of the conference was “The Food-Energy-Water Nexus.” Among the sessions that Iryna attended included Opportunities for Innovative Applications in Sustainable Development; Innovations in Managing Water; Integrating Food, Energy and Water Planning for Sustainable Development.
Assistant Professor Ekundayo Shittu recently received a $50,000 research grant from the LMI Research Institute, along with SEAS Associate Dean Professor Suresh Subramaniam. The project is entitled “Integrating Mesh Networking into the Design of a Smart Healthcare Logistics System.” The project is developing a template for the integration of wireless mesh radio frequency identification into the architecture of a healthcare system for embedded data analysis to capture and distill new insights for improved decision making, particularly in care-supporting functions, logistics management, and predictive analysis.
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| Prof. Deason makes a point. |
EEM Professor Jonathan Deason was quoted over the summer 2015 in the Engineering News-Record in an article titled “New Federal Water Rule May Face a Court Challenge.” The article dealt with the controversy surrounding a recent regulation by the Environmental Protection Agency and the Corps of Engineers over the scope of federal jurisdiction of the nation’s wetlands protection program embodied in Section 404 of the Clean Water Act.
Professor Rachael Jonassen co-authored a presentation titled “Sustainable Permafrost Observing in Support of a Permafrost Forecasting System” at the 2015 Arctic Observing Open Science Meeting, held November 2015 in Seattle, Washington. Her coauthors on this paper included: Dr. Dmitry Streletsky from GW’s Department of Geography; colleagues from the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research and the National Snow and Ice Data Center, both at the University of Colorado Boulder; and two colleagues from NOAA’s Climate Services Division of the National Weather Service.
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| Evelyn Rule Thompson and May Munro Thompson, born 10-26-2015. |
EEM doctoral student Janie Wise Thompson gave birth to twin daughters in October 2015. Evelyn Rule Thompson and May Munro Thompson were born on October 26, 2015.
On December 16, 2015, Professor Joe Cascio made a presentation to the Federal Interagency EMS Community of Practice. This group comprises some 40 governmental representatives and serves to keep Federal agencies, including the U.S. EPA, abreast of EMS developments, and just as importantly, on developments with the ISO 14001 International Standard for EMS and related changes to third party certification of conformity of implemented systems.
Associate Professor Joost Santos published a paper in the November 2015 issue of Clean Technologies and Environmental Policy. The paper is entitled “A Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis Framework for Evaluating Point-of-Use Water Treatment Alternatives.” Another of Prof. Santos’ papers was named one of the five most popular articles published by IIE Transactions in 2014 and 2015. That paper is entitled “Modeling a Severe Supply Chain Disruption and Post-Disaster Decision Making with Application to the Japanese Earthquake and Tsunami,” which was published in IIE Transactions (Vol. 46, Issue 12, 2014).
On November 6, 2015, Professor Joe Cascio delivered a presentation at a workshop at the National Institute of Standards and Technology on the development of the new GW course EMSE 6992-80, Global Connections: Standards in Technology, Business & Public Policy. The workshop is a yearly event for winners of NIST awards to advance standards education. GW was one of seven university winners and grant recipients in 2014, the result of a fruitful collaboration between the Environmental and Energy Management Institute (EEMI) and the GW Institute of Public Policy (GWIPP).
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| Jeet Viswanathan and Lauren Krizel discuss current events. |
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| EEM grads enjoy free beer and hors d'oeuvres. |
EEM graduate Indrajeet Viswanathan, who serves as Chairman of the SEAS Alumni Association, organized an EEM networking session in conjunction with the SEAS Alumni Program. The event, characterized as “Beers with Professor Deason,” was held at Stoney’s Tavern adjacent to the Foggy Bottom campus, on December 10, 2105. About 35 EEM graduates and current students took advantage of beer and hors d’oeuvres provided by the SEAS Alumni Program. Photos of the event can be seen at https://www.flickr.com/photos/gwalumni/sets/72157662699649075.
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| EEM graduates & current students pose with Profs. Deason & Cascio. |
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| Jeet Viswanathan and Janie Thompson |