Gangadhar Andaluri, an environmental engineering doctoral student in the College of Engineering, received the first place PhD research award plus the overall research award in all student categories at PennTec 2009, the annual conference of the Pennsylvania Water Environment Association (PWEA) held at the Lancaster Host Hotel & Conference Center, June 7th – 10th, 2009. His award was unanimously selected by the PWEA committee. The award includes an engraved plaque, a cash prize of $250, and $1200 to travel to WEFTEC national conference, October 10th – 14th.  He will be representing the PWEA chapter at WEFTEC 2009. This is the first PWEA Supported trip to WEFTECThe research session was devoted to showcase ongoing research activities in the field of wastewater, water quality and environmental management relevant to Pennsylvania. There were student presentations from Drexel, Villanova, Penn State, Lehigh, Carnegie Mellon, Maryland and some others. He was judged on research type (relevance to issues related to wastewater treatment, water quality and environmental management in Pennsylvania), poster, podium presentation, and written paper.

Andaluri’s paper was titled “Ultrasound assisted degradation of pharmaceutically active compounds: effect of reactor design variables”. He was joined by his research advisor Dr. Rominder Suri at the Awards Ceremony.   According to Dr. Suri, “Andaluri’s research presentation highlighted the state-of-the-art research into the use of ultrasound as an advanced treatment process for destruction of emerging contaminants in water and wastewater.  He has been working on further developing the reactors for this process, and an application of this technology at an industrial site is currently being designed”.