Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Receive NSF CAREER Awards By Marlys Amundson Earlier this year, civil and environmental engineering professors Steve Margulis and Jenny Jay received CAREER awards from the National Science Foundation. Margulis’s will support “Investigation of Regional Land-Atmosphere Interactions Using a Hierarchical Modeling and Data Assimilation Approach” and Jay’s to “Methylation of Mercury in Sulfate-reducing Biofilms.” In his project, Margulis will use remote sensing data to obtain previously unavailable high-resolution estimates of rootzone soil moisture over regional scales. These estimates are crucial for understanding impacts of the land surface on weather and climate. The data will be used in conjunction with models of the lower atmosphere in an attempt to better understand land-atmosphere interaction, with the ultimate goal being better models for weather/climate simulations. Jay’s research focuses on the contamination of food chains by mercury, a worldwide problem that poses public health threats even in pristine areas. In aquatic systems, less-toxic inorganic mercury is microbially transformed to methylmercury, a potent neurotoxin with a strong tendency to magnify in concentration in food chains. Jay’s lab will look at the role of environmental biofilms in the transformation process. Information gained from this research will determine the environmental factors controlling mercury methylation. The results will enable more accurate modeling of the fate of mercury in the environment, and also may be directly applicable to wetland restoration and lake management decisions. Both projects also have an educational component that incorporates outreach to Los Angeles area pre-college students. Jay’s project involves development of an innovative service-learning course in which UCLA students will learn and then teach wetland functions in grade six classrooms to economically disadvantaged students of Los Angeles. It will involve four in-class laboratory sessions and a field trip for the grade six students (accompanied by the UCLA students) to the Ballona Wetlands. The course will provide an experiential, service-learning based educational opportunity through which undergraduate students have an opportunity to work creatively on the development and improvement of web-accessible curricular materials for environmental science at the grade six level. It also will engage grade six students in much-needed hands-on discovery in environmental science and engineering. Margulis’s goal is to provide broad-based environmental education to not only engineering undergraduates, but also to those insufficiently exposed to science, in an effort to increase awareness of critical environmental issues. The educational plan has three primary components: hands-on environmental education outreach to underrepresented minority and women students in Los Angeles high schools; environmental awareness education for non-science and engineering freshmen at UCLA; and the incorporation of effective educational techniques, with a focus on better integration of research, into undergraduate engineering courses. Please visit http://www.cee.ucla.edu/faculty/jay.htm for more information on Jay's research or http://www.cee.ucla.edu/faculty/margulis.htm for more information on Margulis's work.