Water and the Environment Symposium

Position: Principal Research Scientist, Groundwater Flow Modeler Illinois State Water Survey Prairie Research Institute University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Email:dbabrams@illinois.edu

Talk: Communities and industries to understand risk to their water supply in the southwestern suburbs of Chicago

Dr. Abrams holds a Ph.D. in Environmental Science (2013), a Master of Science in Environmental Science (2010), and a Bachelor of Science in Public Affairs (2007), all from the Indiana University Bloomington School of Public and Environmental Affairs.

His work centers on developing and applying regional and local groundwater flow models for the state of Illinois. Dr. Abrams’ recent projects include collaborating with communities and industrial users in the southwestern suburbs of Chicago to assess risks to their water supply. His research also focuses on creating innovative methods to identify at-risk groundwater users at both local and regional scales, as well as designing frameworks for automatically updating groundwater flow models with new datasets, including water withdrawals and geologic information.

Position: Professor of English, Director of The Freshwater Lab at University of Illinois Chicago

Email: raheleh@uic.edu

Talk: Meeting water Supply Challenges through Water Recycling

Dr. Rachel Havrelock is a professor at the University of Illinois Chicago, where she directs The Freshwater Lab. The Freshwater Lab designs water management and governance solutions for Great Lake states, communicates water imperatives to the general public, and trains the next generation of Great Lakes leaders. Notable achievements of The Freshwater Lab include the multisector summits Water after Borders and Untrouble the Waters; the public-facing digital storytelling sites Freshwater Stories and The Backward River; and six years of a summer internship program with individualized placements and water and environmental organizations. She is recognized as a leading proponent of water recycling and a One Water approach in Great Lake states. The Freshwater Lab’s innovative work on water infrastructure and economic development is frequently highlighted in the media.

Position: Director, Illinois Water Resources Center Principal Research Hydrogeologist Illinois State Geological Survey, Prairie Research Institute, Clinical Professor Civil and Environmental Engineering Research Professor, Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Email: yflin@illinois.edu

Talk: Water-Energy Nexus for Ai Infrastructure Development

Dr. Yu-Feng Forrest Lin is Director of the Illinois Water Resources Center and a Hydrogeologist at the Prairie Research Institute. He is a licensed Professional Geoscientist and certified GIS Professional. In 2006, he was selected as a Faculty Fellow at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, and in 2018, he was elected a Geological Society of America Fellow. Lin serves as an Executive Editor for Groundwater and as President of the National Institutes for Water Resources. Since 2020, he has been a Commissioner on the Great Lakes Commission, appointed by the Governor of Illinois. His research focuses on geothermal exchange, the water–energy–AI nexus, and groundwater–surface water interactions.

Position: Director, UIS Field Station at Lake Springfield University of Illinois Springfield

Email: troth3@uis.edu

Talk: Enhancement of the Aquatic Ecosystems

Dr. Rothfus received his Ph.D. from the Department of Geophysical Sciences at the University of Chicago in 2005, where he studied invertebrate paleoecology. Before coming to the University of Illinois Springfield (UIS), He served as the Director of the Gerace Research Centre, San Salvador, The Bahamas, where he became increasingly interested in protected areas and the application of the fossil record to conservation questions. Dr. Tom currently serves as the Director of UIS’s Therkildsen Field Station at Emiquon. His current research interests focus on the Emiquon Preserve and the Illinois River and include a range of topics from utilizing the shallow fossil record to assess changes in ecological communities, to exploring the semi-aquatic mammal community of the Preserve using camera traps, to evaluating the extent to which litter (plastics in particular) is entering our freshwater systems.

Position: M.T. Geoffrey Yeh Endowed Chair in Civil Engineering, Director, Ven Te Chow Hydrosystems Laboratory, Professor University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Email: mhgarcia@illinois.edu

Talk: River mechanics: Meandering streams, bank erosion, bedform dynamics, nonlinear dune development in large rivers, channel restoration, unsteady flows, movable-bed hydraulic modeling.

Dr. Marcelo Garcia holds the M.T. Geoffrey Yeh Endowed Chair of Civil Engineering and serves as Director of the Ven Te Chow Hydrosystems Laboratory at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he has been a member of the faculty since 1990. Garcia was a Research Fellow at St. Anthony Falls Hydraulic Laboratory, University of Minnesota, where he completed his graduate studies in Civil Engineering (MS85, PhD89). He completed his undergraduate education in Water Resources Engineering at Universidad Nacional de Litoral in Santa Fe, Argentina. Garcia is an Honorary Professor at his alma mater where he was also the Founding Director of the Centro International de Grandes Rios. He was a visiting Professor at the University of Genoa, Italy, Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha, Spain, the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), and the Ecole Polytechnique de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland.

Position: Professor, Water Quality and Water Pollutants Removal Lab Coordinator. Graduate and Research Division Chief Faculty of Higher Studies Iztacala, National Autonomous University of Mexico

Email: torner@comunidad.unam.mx

Talk: Domestic and Industrial Wastewater Issues at Mexico City

Dr. Francisco Torner is a chemical engineer who obtained his Ph.D. in 2010 in Environmental Engineering at Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). Formerly working at the Safety Health and Environment area of DuPont Mexico and currently as Full time Professor at FES Iztacala campus of UNAM, he has industrial and academic experience on environmental subjects. He has participated on a diversity of Research Projects around industrial and ecological issues such as high sulfate industrial wastewater treatment, textile industry wastewater treatment systems through bioprocesses, MMBR systems, micropollutant removal with membrane systems from municipal wastewaters but also from springwaters at the Mezquital Valley, and developments like helminth eggs automated recognizing system with the Engineering Institute of UNAM and Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, mainly. He is currently working as coordinator of the Water Quality Laboratory and the Water Pollutants Removal Processes Lab at the Faculty of Higher Studies Iztacala, and has the honor to be, at present, Chief of the Graduate and Research Division at the same institution.

Position: Professor, University Scholar & Distinguished Researcher Director of Sustainable Engineering Research Laboratory and the Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering Laboratory University of Illinois Chicago

Email: kreddy@uic.edu

Talk: Integrating Artificial Intelligence in Contaminated Site Remediation

Dr. Krishna R. Reddy is a University Scholar, Distinguished Researcher, Professor, and Director of Sustainable Engineering Research Laboratory and the Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering Laboratory at the University of Illinois Chicago. With over 30 years of research and practice experience, his work has advanced the fields of geoenvironmental engineering as well as sustainable and resilient engineering. He made significant innovative contributions to environmental pollution control and remediation, waste management and circular economy, landfill engineering, and the application of artificial intelligence in sustainable geoenvironmental engineering. More details at: https://gagel.lab.uic.edu/

Position: Professor, Aquatic Microecology Lab Faculty of Higher Studies Iztacala, National Autonomous University of Mexico

Email: diego.chaparro.herrera@gmail.com

Talk: Mexican aquatic systems restoration and their biological diversity

Dr. Diego Chaparro is a Full-Time Research Professor at the Faculty of Higher Studies Iztacala, National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). He earned his Bachelor’s degree in Biology, as well as his Master’s and Doctoral degrees in Biological Sciences (Environmental Biology) from UNAM, and he is currently a member of Mexico’s National System of Researchers (SNI). His scientific work focuses on ecology, environmental biology, toxicology, and herpetology, with publications in indexed journals such as Hydrobiologia, Journal of Environmental Biology, Amphibia-Reptilia, and Ecohydrology & Hydrobiology. He has completed international research stays at the University of Liège, Belgium, and at UNAM-Canada and the University of Ottawa. Dr. Chaparro is an active member of several national and international scientific societies and a reviewer for multiple international journals. He also collaborates with Earthwatch Institute (USA) on conservation and reintroduction projects of the axolotl (Ambystoma mexicanum) in Xochimilco.

Position: Associate Dean Administration Stipend, DPI Affiliate Associate Prof. School of Integrated Sciences, Sustainability, and Public Health University of Illinois Springfield

Email: ahans4@uis.edu

Talk: Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene

Dr. Anne-Marie Hanson is currently the Interim Associate Dean for the College of Health, Science and Technology. She is an Associate Professor of Environmental Studies (ENS) and an affiliate of the UI System's Discovery Partners Institute. Her research explores the intersections of gender, pollution, environmental change, and marine ecosystem management, as well as issues of environmental justice linked to wastes, plastic pollution, and materials management. Current research projects: (1) gender, water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) as linked to climate change, marine debris, and urban development in coastal Mexico and the Caribbean, (2) freshwater art-science collaborations to promote pollution prevention and environmental justice along Illinois waterways, and (3) circular economies and inclusive regional sustainability in Illinois.

Position: Tropical Limnology Research Group, Faculty of Higher Studies Iztacala, National Autonomous University of Mexico

Email: mirek@unam.mx

Talk: Microbial food web as a sentinel of climate change

Dr. Miroslav Macek graduated from the University of Chemistry and Technology, Prague (Czech Republic). However, his career has been focused on aquatic microbial ecology. He began studying the ciliate-driven processes underlying activated sludge treatment using continuous-flow cultivation, targeted to the elimination of xenobiotics and enhancing phosphorus accumulation. He applied direct measurement of ciliate feeding rate using fluorescently labelled prey. During the 1990 cholera pandemic, at the National Autonomous University of Mexico and IMTA (the Mexican Institute of Water Technology), he investigated the efficiency of potential protozoan elimination of Vibrio cholerae in brackish water and saline lakes. For the last two decades at UNAM, his research has dealt with the role of ciliates within the microbial loop in stratified athalassohaline lakes with an anoxic hypolimnion (since 2003, lake Alchichica, Mexico).

Position: Section Lead - Water Impact on Society and Environment Illinois State Water Survey Prairie Research Institute | University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Email: ebauer@illinois.edu

Talk: Hydrologic, precipitation, soil, nutrient, and sediment data in the Sangamon, Illinois, and Kaskaskia River watersheds

Erin Bauer, M.S. has over 25 years of experience in multi-scale watershed monitoring studies of hydrology, sediment, and nutrients in Illinois. She is principal investigator and field research coordinator for several year-round environmental monitoring and sampling projects. Monitoring and research efforts include hydrologic, precipitation, soil, nutrient, and sediment data and sampling collection and analysis in the Sangamon, Illinois, and Kaskaskia River watersheds. These investigations aim to provide high quality scientific analyses about watershed processes to decision-makers so that they can develop and implement sustainable watershed actions.

Position: Professor Aquatic Ecology Lab Faculty of Higher Studies Iztacala, National Autonomous University of Mexico

Email: sarma@unam.mx

Talk: Plankton bioindicators of water quality

Dr. S.S.S. Sarma obtained his doctorate in 1988, is an aquatic ecologist specializing in freshwater zooplankton. He has been a full-time professor at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, Faculty of Higher Studies Iztacala (Tlalnepantla campus), since 1995. He is an elected member of the Mexican Academy of Sciences and a National Researcher (S.N.I.) Level III for the period 2009–2028. He has published more than 275 scientific articles in journals indexed in the Web of Science. He has edited/co-edited 13 special volumes for prestigious publishers such as Springer, Elsevier, and Taylor & Francis. He is currently the Editor of Rotifer News. A total of 75 undergraduate, master’s, and doctoral students have completed their theses under his supervision. He was awarded the State Prize in Natural and Exact Sciences (2005) from the State of Mexico.

Position: Professor Aquatic Ecology Lab. Faculty of Higher Studies Iztacala, National Autonomous University of Mexico

Email: nandini@unam.mx

Talk: Invasive planktonic species in lentic and lotic waters

Dr. S. Nandini has been working at the Faculty of Higher Studies Iztacala, National Autonomous University of Mexico since 1997; since then, teaching courses in Research Methodologies. Research lines include basic and applied topics in aquatic ecology with emphasis on cyanobacteria, zooplankton, fish larvae and axolotls, invasive species, and ecotoxicology, among others. She has been an advisor for more than 65 undergraduate, master’s, and doctoral theses. Recipient of the Academic Merit Award (2012) and the Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Medal (2014). Reviewer for more than 25 international journals. Participation in over 40 national and international research projects. She participated as a Keynote speaker and presenter at more than 30 international and 50 national conferences. Organizer of 25 workshops and 4 international conferences. Author of more than 280 publications in national and international journals, including Nature.