Research

Reducing the climate impact of our water, wastewater, and food systems

Current Work

As a post-doctoral researcher at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, I conduct system-level modeling of U.S. water and wastewater infrastructure to improve our understanding of the energy and the environmental impact of treatment requirements, both at present day and in the future. 

While I'm working on several projects at the moment, for the last 6 months my main focus has been on modeling current greenhouse gas emissions from the 15,000+ wastewater treatment plants in the United States. This work is submitted for peer review, but the pre-print can be accessed through Earth ArXiv: 

Publications

Stanford 2022 Methane Controlled Releases 

In Fall 2022, I led the Brandt research group methane controlled release campaign in which we tested 22 different methane sensing technologies: five airplanes, nine satellites, and eight ground-based continuous monitoring sensors.  In my role as postdoc & project lead, I oversaw all the different aspects of implementing this extensive field campaign, including: fundraising; participant recruitment; experimental design; equipment design with Volta Fabrication; field site selection and scheduling logistics; field research operation with Rawhide Leasing, personnel deployment, and onsite safety; data collection strategy; data cleaning and processing for use in all subsequent publications. This work would not have been possible without the dedicated and brilliant team of students and collaborators listed in the byline of the publications below. 

This project resulted in the following publications: 

Chen, El Abbadi et al.  featured cover art in ES&T Air
Aug 9, 2024 Vol 1, Issue 8

Stanford Criddle Lab Research

I completed my PhD in the Criddle and Luby Labs at Stanford University, through the Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering. My research focused on how bacteria can be incorporated into food production to improve resilience and sustainability, which I call the "dark food chain." We can use bacteria, an incredibly energy efficient source of high-quality protein, as feed for agriculture or aquaculture, reducing reliance on fishmeal  extracted from over-harvested fisheries - a practice causing many of the world's oceans to face the risk of ecosystem collapse. In fact, my work shows that microbial protein produced from methane that is currently emitted to the atmosphere or flared could be an economically competitive substitute for fishmeal on a global scale. While at Stanford, I also collaborated with fellow students who explored how we can use microbes to grow biodegradable plastics, convert urine in wastewater into flame retardants, and use mealworms to degrade plastic. The common thread of all this work is that each project harnesses the incredible power of microbiology to support a renewable, environmentally-friendly economy.