Our high school student researcher, Sarah was our SHINE student this past summer. More information about the program can be found here.

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USC Provost's New Directions for Research and Scholarship Award recently funded for the project "Isolating Microbial Dark Matter to Breathe Greenhouse Gases."

19 September 2019

 

 

Big welcome to Bianca Costa who joined our group as a Ph.D. student and to Syeed Md Iskander as a Post Doctoral Research Scholar this month!

August 2019

 

 

Undergraduates in the environmental engineering microbiology course taught by Dr.Smith use the brand-new lab space to study their own microbiomes.

13 December 2018

 

 

Siming’s 2018 paper "Methane-driven microbial fuel cells recover energy and mitigate dissolved methane emissions from anaerobic effluents" was one of the best papers for 2018 in ESWRT.

28 March 2019

 

 

NSF proposal to study the effect of material properties and scaling on wetting of membranes used in membrane distillation awarded with Dr. Amy Childress. For more information click here.

1 June 2018

 

 

Dr. Smith is co-charing the upcoming Anaerobic Digestion AD17 conference with Dr. Lutgarde Raskin!

 

Dr. Smith was recently featured on the Environmental Science: Water Research and Technology Blog as part of their Emerging Investigator Series. Checkout his Q&A here.

8 November 2018

 

 

Congrats to Siming and Moustapha for publishing their latest research! The paper, "Emerging investigators series: revisiting greenhouse gas mitigation from conventional activated sludge and anaerobic-based wastewater treatment systems ," was published in Environmental Science: Water Research and Technology and can be found here.

24 October 2018

 

 

Checkout Tranice's article in Viterbi News discussing her recent NSF Fellowship and research! Find the article here.

23 October 2018

 

 

Congrats to Stephanie for publishing her first paper while at USC! The paper, "Optimizing electrospinning parameters for piezoelectric PVDF nanofiber membranes," was published in Journal of Membrane Science and can be found here.

10 July 2018

 

 

Congrats to Stephanie Gee and Tranice' Warner for receiving NSF Graduate Research Fellowships this year! Viterbi had four fellowship recipients this year and we are ecstatic that two came from our research group!

3 April 2018

 

 

Congrats to Siming for publishing his first paper while at USC! The paper, "Methane-driven microbial fuel cells recover energy and mitigate dissolved methane emissions from anaerobic effluents," was published in Environmental Science: Water Research & Technology and can be found here.

28 October 2017

 

 

Big welcome to Tranice' Warner, Iris Wang, and Phillip Wang who joined our group as Ph.D. students this month!

17 August 2017

 

 

Congrats to Noel Ermer for completing the SHINE program! Noel spent her summer mentored by Stephanie Gee exploring direct interspecies electron transfer (DIET) in anaerobic systems.

16 August 2017

 

 

We're happy to send Caroline Kim off to Stanford University this fall to study Chemical Engineering!

3 July 2017

 

 

Congrats to Yamrot for publishing her first paper while at USC! The paper, "Elucidating microbial community adaptation to anaerobic co-digestion of fats, oils, and grease and food waste," was published in Water Research and can be found here.

1 July 2017

 

 

Check out our latest paper analyzing microbial community structure in full-scale, two-phase anaerobic digesters published in Environmental Science: Water Research & Technology. Available online here.

13 January 2017

 

 

Congrats to Caroline Kim, a high school researcher, for winning the Naval Science Award for her work on DMSO as a solvent in fabricating piezoelectric PVDF membranes!

27 March 2017

 

 

Dr. Smith was recently awarded an NSF GOALI to research decentralized anaerobic membrane bioreactor food waste treatment in collaboration with Divert!

31 August 2016

 

 

Stephanie Gee and Ali Zarei-Baygi just joined the group as new PhD students! Stephanie will be evaluating piezoelectric nanofiber membranes and Ali will be working on antibiotic resistance.

16 August 2016

 

 

Caroline Kim, a high school researcher in our lab, won 3rd place in the Environmental Science category of the Palos Verdes Peninsula Science and Engineering Fair as well as the Ricoh Sustainable Development Award, presented to the project that shows the greatest potential towards sustainable development!

1 April 2016

 

 

Dr. Smith and co-PI Dr. Lauren Stadler at Rice University were just awarded a grant from USDA/NIFA to evaluate antibiotic resistance in  reuse water for agriculture! The funding was even mentioned in a White House Press Release on World Water Day!  

22 March 2016

 

 

Dr. Smith was recently featured in a special LA Water Issue on the Viterbi website to celebrate World Water Day. Check out the video of Dr. Smith and other CEE faculty here.

22 March 2016

 

 

Our paper in Environmental Science: Water Research & Technology was one of 2015's most downloaded articles!

15 January 2016

 

 

Check out this short video on SHINE featuring testimonials by parents of the high school students we hosted last summer.  

26 January 2016

 

 

Dr. Smith and Yamrot went to WEFTEC where Yamrot gave her first platform presentation as a PhD student!

28 September 2015

 

 

Yamrot, Junior, and Kevin presented their research at the UCLA-NSF Food-Energy-Water Nexus Workshop.

4 December 2015

 

 

Chloe was featured in USC Viterbi's article on the SHINE program.

12 August 2015

 

Read the article here.

Chloe and Garrett did an excellent job presenting their research at today's SHINE poster session!

5 August 2015

 

 

Our research article was published in Microbial Biotechnology and is available via Early View.

5 August 2015

 

Read the full paper here.

Yamrot Amha and Siming Chen have officially joined the lab as PhD students. Yamrot received a Provost Fellowship from USC while Siming received a fellowship from the China Scholarship Council and is now a USC/CSC Global Fellow in Viterbi. Congrats to both of them!

1 July 2015

 

 

Viterbi Magazine published an article on our research titled Two for One: Recyling Water while Recovering Energy.

8 May 2015

 

Check out the article here.

Our research featured on the inside cover of Environmental Science: Water Research & Technology!

21 January 2015

 

Our research was featured on the inside cover of the first issue of Environmental Science: Water Research & Technology. This issue includes our paper, Anaerobic membrane bioreactor treatment of domestic wastewater at psychrophilic temperatures ranging from 15C to 3C. Read the full paper here.