News

Dr. Christina Smeaton and Dr. Nandita Basu were invited to give talks at this year's annual Farvolden seminar series. Dr. Smeaton's talk was entitled: "Living on the energetic edge: Predicting microbial growth in low energy environments" and Dr. Basu presented "Down Under: The Critical Role of the Subsurface in Controlling Surface Water Pollution". 

Master's students Elaine Secord and Christine Ridenour presented their 3-minute theses.

The 54^th Meeting of the University Consortium for Field Focused Groundwater Research was held at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, Colorado, October 12-13, 2016.Fereidoun gave a talk entitled “Groundwater table fluctuation zone: A hot-spot for biogeochemical activities”, with co-authors Tatjana Milojevic, Adrian Mellage, Geertje Pronk and Philippe Van Cappellen.

The findings were summarized on the Water Institute's blog.

The Government of Canada awarded $78 Million through the Canada First Research Excellence Fund to support the Global Water Futures (GWF) research program, led by the University of Saskatchewan.

The 5th International EcoSummit Congress, EcoSummit 2016 - Ecological Sustainability: Engineering Change, was held in Montpellier, France from August 29 to September 1, 2016.Fereidoun gave a talk entitled “Structure of peatland soils and implications for water storage, flow and solute transport”, with co-authors J. S. Price (University of Waterloo), W. L. Quinton (Wilfrid Laurier University), B. Lennartz (Rostock University), T. Milojevic, P. Van Cappellen.

Check out the new publication by PhD student Bingjie Shi on the bioavailability to iron reducing bacteria of ferric iron in clay minerals, which appeared in the journal Environmental Science and Technology. The paper made the cover of the journal (http://pubs.acs.org/toc/esthag/50/16)!

Philippe Van Cappellen attended the 2^nd Sino-Canada Workshop on Plateau Lakes Research, which was held August 14-16 at Yunnan University, Kunming, China.  The workshop focused on the challenges facing the protection and management of water resources in the Plateau Lakes region of Yunnan. Issues ranged from non-point source pollution to invasive species and ecological risk assessment. Break-out sessions allowed the participants to formulate joint research projects between Chinese and Canadian partners.

Fereidoun visited (June 20^th to July 28^th, 2016) the Faculty of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences at Rostock University in Germany as part of a Mercator Fellowship awarded to him to collaborate with new Baltic TRANSCOAST Research Training Group funded by German Research Foundation (DFG) (2015-2020). Baltic TRANSCOAST group studies the hydrodynamic, (bio)geochemical and biological processes at the interface between land and sea.

In a new paper published in Water, Air, & Soil Pollution, Ecohydrology Research Group members describe how electrokinetics can be used to transport known contaminant degrading bacteria into low-permeability soils. The work opens the way to apply electrokinetic techniques to deliver non-native bacteria into contaminated soils for bioremediation purposes.

The paper is available electronically by visiting:

http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11270-016-2991-z

In November 2015, the Government of Ontario and the Ministry of Science and Technology of China (MOST) signed a Memorandum of Understanding to promote the exchange of young scientists between the two jurisdictions. The goals of the Young Scientist Exchange program (YSEP) are to (1) raise awareness and facilitate a greater understanding of the respective scientific cultures and research practices and systems of Ontario and China, (2) encourage the development of leadership skills among YSEP participants as well as future “science ambassadors” between the two jurisdictions, and (3) facilitate