- Professor Clement’s oil spill work was featured in local WSFA News on the anniversary of the 12th BP oil spill accident on April 20th 2022. https://www.wsfa.com/video/2022/04/21/th-anniversary-since-deepwater-horizon-disaster/
- The Department of Civil, Construction and Environmental Engineering’s annual awards ceremony was held on April 5th 2022. Several IGM researchers were recognized in this ceremony. Graduate student Eli Volk received the Bibb Graves Award for Outstanding GTA Assistant; Assistant Professor Leigh Terry received the Excellence in Undergraduate Education Award; Associate Professor Mukesh Kumar received the Excellence in Research Mid-Career Award; and Professor Prabhakar Clement received the Excellence in Research and Innovation Senior Scholar Award.
- Kumar’s team has developed new method for retrieving root zone soil moisture using the surface flux theory and this work was published in Environmental Research Lettershttps://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ac2441/meta
- Clement’s PhD student Ms. Sama Memari defended her PhD dissertation: “Measurement of Soil and Water-Quality Parameters to Understand Subsurface Transport Processes” on Oct 1st2021.
- Two computer science professors at the Alabama State University, Dr. Uma Kannan (tenure-track assistant professor) and Dr. Raj Swamidurai (full professor), formally jointed the IGM project team. They recently received $200,000 NSF grant to develop process constrained machine learning algorithms for analyzing hydrological data.
- Pooja Preetha a tenure-track assistant professor at the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Alabama A&M University, jointed the IGM project team. Dr. Preetha received $200,000 NSF grant to use the soil water assessment model SWAT to model catchment scale groundwater recharge processes.
- The IGM team has received $200,000 grant to hire a post-doctoral researcher who graduated from a minority institution. Dr. Kumar will be leading this post-doctoral search.
- Auburn University researchers Dr. Eve Brantley (professor), Ann Ojeda (tenure-track faculty), Stephanie Rogers (tenure-track faculty) and Jose Vasconcelos (associate professor) will joining the IGM project team for promoting groundwater education and outreach efforts through various agriculture extension centers in the southeastern US. Their efforts will be directly supported by the IGM project.
- The University of Alabama welcomes a new assistant professor Dr. Daqian Jiang (DJ) who is one of the IGM project hires. Dr. Jiang is a water quality management expert and will be working groundwater contaminants such as selenium and PFAS footprints. https://djiang3.wixsite.com/mysite
- Clement was selected to serve on the national committee for envisioning the future of NSF EPSCoR program. https://beta.nsf.gov/envisioning-future-nsf-epscor/committee-members
- Clement’s team published a paper for analyzing pump test data in the Waterjournal https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4441/13/16/2180/htm
- Clement’s team published a paper for analyzing soil moisture data in the Computers & Geosciencesjournal. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0098300421001898
- Terry and Clement’s team published an oil spill paper in the Science for the Total Environmentjournal. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048969721031272
- The University of Alabama welcomes a new assistant professor Dr. Mesfin Mekonnen who is one of the IGM project hires. Dr. Mekonnen is an expert in evaluating water footprints. https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=6TI3NIsAAAAJ&hl=en
- IGM MS student, Eliane Volk, successfully defended her Master’s Thesis in March 2022, “Groundwater Data Assessment in The Southeastern U.S. – A Status Check of Alabama, Mississippi, And Louisiana” Advisor: Dr. Leigh Terry. She will continue her PhD with Dr. Terry at UA.
- Dr. Terry received Fulbright Specialist Award for work in Colombia November 2021 –https://news.ua.edu/2021/08/ua-engineering-faculty-receives-fulbright-award/