Our Vision
Our research cohort provides local, national and global small and rural communities with the necessary data, designs and support needed to make sustainable choices to improve resiliency of and promote community engagement with environmentally engineered systems.
The Mission
Our research cohort is focused on working in tandem with small and rural communities to co-design sustainable and responsible solutions to ongoing water, sanitation and health needs globally. We understand the importance of collecting representative data, communicating data effectively to our partners and interpreting data to make sound decisions. We interact, engage and work as equal partners with the communities we serve, asking questions and respecting all sociocultural viewpoints to ensure our work reflects and respects our partner’s experience and expertise. We engage in both quantitative and qualitative research to ground our conclusions not only in data, but in experience, to contextualize our results and adequately communicate the scope of the problem we are addressing. Our research cohort strives to enhance small and rural community capacity locally, nationally and globally to ensure equitable access to drinking water, sanitation and health services.
For Prospective Students
If you are a prospective student interested in working on research projects with myself and our group, there are several important things to be aware of before you reach out:
- I am an assistant professor of practice. This means my job consists mainly of a teaching apportionment and any research I do is largely data analysis based and unfunded by larger grants. I am happy to work with you to secure funding and a project, however, you should be aware that I am a teacher first and researcher second so my ability to support you is different from assistant and associate professors with a larger research apportionment.
- I am happy to help you secure funding for a master's program through our Graduate Student Assistantship program at UNL but know that there are many applicants each semester across the department and teaching assistant positions are limited. If you are interested in a graduate student teaching assistant position, please make sure to indicate this in our conversations. There are also external grants and internal grants and programs through UNL that can help to fund your graduate studies.
- I am happy to oversee undergraduate and master's student research. If you are looking to complete a Ph.D., I can be a co-advisor for your project, but you will also need to work with myself and our faculty to find a co-advisor for your project. Be aware of who else in the department could help support your areas of research interest. I do not apply for many grants each year and have limited funding for graduate students; I am happy to work with you to find funding but your PhD will largely need to be self funded or funded through a collaboration with another professor in our department.
Ongoing Projects
Examining the Middle East Region’s capacity for onsite wastewater treatment using global datasets
In conjunction with researchers from the American University of Beirut, we are using the Joint Monitoring Programme (JMP) datasets for sanitation to examine trends in onsite wastewater use in the Middle East and North Africa region. This study uses a literature review to contextualize wastewater usage patterns and data collected by the World Health Organization (WHO) and UNICEF to examine trends in sanitation coverage across different countries. We are interested in understanding how prevalent the use of onsite systems is in rural and urban areas and what opportunities are available to close gaps in access to sanitation in this region. Below, we present a draft map of the population served by specific sanitation services in both rural and urban areas.
Evaluating Nebraska’s Technical Capacity to Treat PFAS in Drinking Water
As part of a Summer Undergraduate Research program, we are using an adapted Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) definition of technical capacity to examine publicly available data in Nebraska to determine which public water systems may currently have the technology, systems operational support and general ability to treat for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) in drinking water.
This study not only evaluates technical capacity in Nebraska as a case study but will generate a model for other states to examine technical capacity for other emerging contaminants beyond PFAS using publicly available data.
To date, we have evaluated trends in the datasets in the R software language and have learned there are systems with potential treatment available but that management and operational practices play a large role in how effective these strategies will be. Below, we present a draft graphic showing our initial proposed methodology.
Reviewing Probability Methodologies used in Drinking Water Industry Modeling Efforts
One of the topics that has fascinated me since my doctoral work is how people interpret and use probability in the water industry to make decisions.