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December 2025
A Year in Review!
After a long hiatus from posting, I am excited to share the highlights from a transformative year—both professionally and personally. This year, I began my new role as Assistant Professor of Environmental Engineering at Oregon State University. I am grateful and excited for this opportunity to work alongside talented colleagues and students in beautiful Corvallis, Oregon. This transition marks a new chapter in my career. I look forward to building my research group to do bigger and better work in the digital water space and to help develop the next generation of environmental engineers.
Despite being a year of transition, 2025 was also a year of proposal writing! I was honored to receive two major grants from the U.S. Department of Defense’s Environmental Security Technology Certification Program (ESTCP) including ‘Digital Water for DOD Installations’ (PI) and ‘Increasing Installation Energy Resilience through Energy Producing Resource Recovery Facilities’ (co-PI). Additionally, I was awarded a Water Research Foundation (WRF) Tailored Collaboration Project with MAIA Water and Metropolitan Council. More details to come!
The cherry on top of 2025? I celebrated my first year as a parent. Balancing research, teaching, and my role as a mother has been both rewarding and humbling—here’s to new beginnings and continued growth in 2026!
December 2022
Are You Ready For Big Data?
What are the real hurtles for big data? The majority of utilities have a lot of knowledge management and digital infrastructure to develop before the first machine learning model is built! As a part of AWWA’s Information Management and Technology subcommittee, we have put together a summary article (“Are You Ready For Big Data?”) of essential information to understand and key steps to take to fully utilize data-driven process monitoring and control at a water utility. Find it in Journal AWWA!
July 2022
Poop Science for National Security
Energy security is tied to energy resilliance and independence. My good friend and Environmental Program Director at West Point, LTC Andy Pfluger, is leading a team to pilot co-digestion as a tactic for DOD installation energy independence. The team includes faculty members from the departments of Geography and Environmental Engineering, Chemistry and Life Science, and Civil and Mechanical Engineering, as well as scientists with the Army Engineer Research and Development Center Risk and Decision Team. For this work, the DOD Environmental Security Technology Certification Program has awarded him and our team $925,000. My role will be to assit our post-doc (soon-to-be Dr. Jennie Callahan) in the co-digestion modeling. I promise our team is better at mathematical modeling than the type of ‘modeling’ for taking photos. 🤣
June 2022
Recipient of the 2023 ASEE Environmental Engineering Division Early Career Award
It was an honor to receive the Early Career Award from the Environmental Engineering Division of ASEE for my conference paper: The Green Escape Room: Part 2 - Teaching Students Professional Engineering Ethics by Applying Environmental Engineering Principles and Deciphering Clues and Puzzles. In this work, an escape room-style activity was used to challenge senior undergraduate students on their environmental engineering ethics in preparation for the Fundamentals of Engineering exam. I could not have won this award without my co-authors and mentors LTC Andy Pfluger and Dr. Mike Butkus (first and second from the right, respectively). Thank you, Dr. David Sanchez (first from the left) for welcoming me into the Environmental Engineering Division; your passion is an inspiration.
March 2022
Open-access textbook: now available!
Over the past two years, I’ve worked with a great team of water industry professionals on an open-access textbook: Pathways to Water Sector Decarbonization, Carbon Capture and Utilization. Led by Dr. Jason Ren of Princeton University and Dr. Krishna Pagilla of University of Nevada-Reno, it provides an in-depth, up-to-date perspective on modern decarbonization strategies for all aspects of the water sector. Today, it’s available to the public for free thanks to IWA Publishing! Check out my contribution, Chapter 16: Data science tools to enable decarbonized water and wastewater treatment systems.
Download your free copy here: https://doi.org/10.2166/9781789061796
September 2021
🎉🎉🎉 100th citation 🎉🎉🎉
My 1st first-author paper, a literature review on the state-of-the-industry data-driven process monitoring for municipal wastewater treatment, published just over 2 years ago just recieved it’s 100th citation. It’s an exciting milestone as a young academic and could not have been acheived without the guidance and support of my advisors and co-authors. Here’s to 100 more!
-Dr. N