CEE alumnus Ran Mei (MS 15, PhD 20) has won the 2021 Jacobs Engineering Group/Association of Environmental Engineering and Science Professors (AEESP) Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation Award. His adviser was CEE professor Wen-Tso Liu. Mei is a postdoctoral researcher in the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology in Japan.
Mei’s dissertation is titled, “Investigating the Roles of Microbial Immigration in Wastewater Treatment Processes.” The work quantitatively investigates the previously overlooked roles of microbial immigration in biological wastewater treatment by coupling biomarker sequencing, reactor kinetics and meta-omics. Mei found that microbial immigrants are ubiquitous, but their activities vary significantly in different ecosystems. The concept, methodology and findings in the dissertation renovate how microbial ecologists decipher community assembly processes and help water quality engineers to better understand the microbial principles that govern treatment performance.
This award, endowed by Jacobs Engineering Group, is given annually to recognize an outstanding doctoral dissertation that contributes to the advancement of environmental science and engineering. The award consists of a plaque and a cash prize of $1,500 for the student, and a plaque and a cash prize of $500 for the faculty adviser.