CBEE faculty and students are highlighted for their innovative and impactful work in the areas of 'Climate and Environment' and 'Health and Life Sciences' in the inaugural issue of Inquiring Minds: UMBC Research and Creative Achievement.
Matthew Stromberg, Environmental Engineering PhD student, under the guidance of advisors Dr. Upal Ghosh, professor of chemical, biochemical and environmental engineering and Dr. Yonathan Zohar, professor of marine biotechnology.
Matthew Stromberg's work with Dr. Yonathan Zohar, professor of marine biotechnology, on land-based aquaculture is highlighted. Dr. Zohar has been a driving force behind decades of research into land-based aquaculture, which has taken off in the U.S. and abroad in recent years. These operations produce fish for human consumption in land-based facilities that are less susceptible to disease and result in fresher fish for locals. They also remove the risk of releasing waste or farmed fish into the environment and reduce costs and the carbon footprint associated with shipping. Plus, they create jobs and help decrease American reliance on seafood imports.
Dr. Claire Welty, professor of chemical, biochemical and environmental engineering, is featured for her leadership role in the Baltimore Social-Environmental Collaborative (BSEC), a project funded by the U.S. Department of Energy to address urban environmental challenges. Welty and her UMBC colleagues received $2.3 million of the $24.5 million grant awarded to the BSEC. The project aims to generate solutions to environmental concerns through community engagement and collaboration with organizations in three American cities. The team brings decades of experience in environmental monitoring and has received awards from the U.S. Forest Service and the National Science Foundation to support their work. Welty emphasizes the importance of partnering with local communities to address their needs and concerns and finding effective ways to implement solutions. She describes the project as a giant puzzle to put together and looks forward to seeing how it all unfolds.
The groundbreaking work conducted by Dr. Erin Lavik, professor of chemical, biochemical and environmental engineering and Dr. Nuzhat Maisha, Ph.D. '21, chemical and biochemical engineering and colleagues to develop nanoparticles that can stop internal bleeding is highlighted in the story on page 17.
The article discusses the challenges of controlling bleeding in trauma patients and the need for faster delivery of medication to control the bleeding. The researchers developed a novel approach to modifying the surfaces of nanoparticles used in lifesaving medications to provide infusions that can be delivered more quickly and with a reduced risk of negative reactions.
The article goes into detail about the researchers' findings and how they focused on the core material of the nanoparticles to reduce infusion reactions, which limit the treatments available to patients. The article also discusses how this groundbreaking research lays the groundwork for future testing of preclinical models using nanocapsules to stop internal bleeding.
Read full articles: Inquiring Minds: UMBC Research and Creative Achievement.
]]>By exploring how chemical contaminants move through the environment and affect aquatic food webs, Upal Ghosh, Ph.D., of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC), aims to develop and implement technologies to help ecosystems recover from pollution.
With consistent NIEHS funding since 2007, Ghosh studies contaminants called polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), which can build up in organisms over time and along the food chain. Ghosh assesses pollutant bioavailability, or the amount of a contaminant available for uptake by fish and other organisms, with a particular focus on PCBs.
“During my undergraduate studies in chemical engineering, I got to visit different industrial sites and understand how we produce chemicals in bulk,” Ghosh said. “Although chemical industries provide many benefits for people — producing thousands of consumer products we use today — I was disappointed to see the problems that occur when chemicals like PCBs are mismanaged and enter the environment.”
His goal is to use nature-based strategies to clean up contaminants and reduce exposures in aquatic organisms and humans alike.
PCBs are a group of chemicals formerly used in many industrial and consumer products, such as electrical equipment, insulation, paint, and plastics. Although the federal government banned PCB production in 1979, the compounds persist in soils, sediments, and water bodies due to their stable chemical structure.
Exposure to PCBs has been associated with a wide variety of health effects, including liver problems, poor birth outcomes, hormone disruption, and cancer. In general, people are exposed to PCBs by eating contaminated fish, meat, or dairy products.
“If we can limit the amount of PCBs bioavailable to fish, we can also help protect human health,” Ghosh explained.
To better understand PCB accumulation in organisms, Ghosh’s team has been studying the Anacostia River in Washington, D.C., which faces ongoing PCB contamination. The river’s long history of urbanization and industrialization has resulted in pollution, poor water quality, and contaminated sediments in the riverbed.
The team deployed passive samplers and freshwater mussels into the Anacostia River as dual methods to identify PCB sources. Mussels are sedentary, long-lived filter feeders that have been shown to accumulate contaminants without metabolizing them. They then developed models to accurately predict PCB accumulation in mussels and different fish species in the river.
According to Ghosh, this research demonstrated that controlling ongoing PCB inputs from one heavily impacted tributary was critical for the reduction of PCB levels in fish.
“At many contaminated sites, we found that PCB hotspots were located near disadvantaged communities, which poses an environmental justice and health equity issue for the people who live there,” Ghosh said.
image credits:
Photo courtesy of Upal Ghosh
Oindrila Ghosh, environmental engineering doctoral candidate, is the winner of the Student Paper Competition for the Eleventh International Conference on the Remediation and Management of Contaminated Sediments for her paper, “Design Optimization of Passive Sampling Prototypes with Periodic Vibration for Porewater Measurements of Polychlorinated Biphenyls.” The 2023 Sediments Conference will take place in Austin, Texas from January 9-12, 2023. Oindrila will present her work during the poster presentations.
Oindrila is in her fourth year of her doctoral program under the supervision of Dr. Upal Ghosh. Her research focuses on the fate and transport of persistent organic contaminants in the environment that tend to bioaccumulate in aquatic organisms like fish.
Student paper title: Design Optimization of Passive Sampling Prototypes with Periodic Vibration, for Porewater Measurements of Polychlorinated Biphenyls.
Authors: Oindrila Ghosh, Louis Cheung, Upal Ghosh (University of Maryland Baltimore County, Baltimore, MD), Mehregan Jalalizadeh (Exponent, Los Angeles, California)
ABSTRACT: Polymeric passive sampling has emerged as a promising approach for accurate measurements of bioavailability of hydrophobic organic contaminants. However, in-situ measurements of sediment porewater concentrations are challenged by slower mass transfer through the water boundary layer (WBL) outside the polymer compared to well-stirred laboratory measurements. Using performance reference compounds (PRC) to correct for non-equilibrium conditions is prone to error, especially for more hydrophobic compounds like higher homolog group Polychlorinated Biphenyls (PCBs) and dioxins/furans. Previous research has shown that the mechanical disruption of the WBL outside the polymer surface by introducing periodic vibration on the sampling platform greatly enhances the approach to equilibrium for more hydrophobic contaminants. In this study we aim to optimize the design of these prototypes and vibration frequency for sediment porewater measurements through laboratory experiments and mathematical modeling. The key motivations were to make the sampling devices versatile for more hydrophobic organics and increase the size of the prototypes from the initial proof-of-concept design by increasing the size of the motor and making them more reliable for deployment in the field, all the while keeping them low-cost.
IMAGE CREDIT: Dr. Upal Ghosh
Learn more about Oindrila’s research and art at https://www.oinghosh.com/ and on Linkedin
]]>UMBC is seeking applicants in the following areas for urban environmental work: