Curriculum Vitae

I am into waste….or, perhaps stated in a more eloquent manner, I am focused on developing advanced technologies, centered on natural biological processes, for ‘upcycling’ [1] waste.

As individuals and as a society, we generate copious quantities of waste every day. Developed and undeveloped countries….urban and rural communities….industrial and agricultural….liquid and solid – our activities inherently generate waste....and much of this waste contains significant quantities of organic matter. Opportunities exist to recover and/or produce high value commodities from these organic-rich waste streams. Unfortunately, our current approach is largely based on ‘managing’ these waste streams....in other words, ‘disposing’ of the waste in a manner than theoretically has minimal impact to human activities (first) and the environment (second). At best, we ‘downcycle’ [1] the high value raw material.

My research group views these waste streams through an entirely different lens. We see opportunities….to recover high value compounds....to produce commodities that are of significant value to society – that can replace commodities that are otherwise produced from non-renewable raw materials….and perhaps most importantly, to not simply dispose of the waste for future generations to deal with, but to advance natural processes that can (optimally) lead to closed loop re-use and/or upcycling [1]. Moreover, our focus is to accomplish this resource recovery and conversion using wild bacteria….we are, in part, focused on applying advanced molecular techniques to understand how to best capture and optimize natural bacterial processes to perform critical resource conversion and recovery tasks.

So, what type of research are we currently conducting….

Ø  We are producing biodegradable thermoplastics using wild bacterial consortia fed organic acid-rich wastewater derived from dairy manure, municipal wastewater, and crude glycerol….the plastic exhibits some very exciting material properties.

Ø  We are investigating, at a macro and molecular level, bacterial processes to more efficiently remove soluble orthophosphate from wastewater….excess phosphorus in natural surface water bodies can lead to advanced eutrophication, which reduces water quality and adversely affects aquatic organisms, drinking water potential, and recreation, among other beneficial uses.

Ø  We are investigating the ability to produce methane and reduce pathogens through a novel two-stage anaerobic digestion process wherein dairy manure is first fermented, the organic acid-rich wastewater is directed to other processes, and the residual manure is transferred to the methanogenic digester for methane production.

 1.  McDonough, W. and M. Braungart, Cradle to cradle:  remaking the way we make things. 2002, New York: North Point Press. 193.

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Professionally I have over 17 years of experience as a consulting engineer, 10 of which were full-time, and have been a licensed Professional Civil Engineer since 1995.  I am currently licensed in Idaho, Washington, and Oregon.