Environmental Engineering

Description

In broadest terms, the field of Environmental Engineering is concerned with understanding the impacts of human activities on the public health, natural environmental quality, and natural resources and with developing the scientific basis for identifying, analyzing, solving, mitigating, or managing environmental problems caused by human activities. The field emerged as a separate engineering discipline during the middle third of the 20th century in response to widespread public concern about water and air pollution and increasingly extensive environmental quality degradation. However, its roots extend back to early efforts in public health engineering in the late 19th century, and to ancient times with regard to urban drinking water systems. The Environmental Engineering program supports fundamental research and educational activities across the broad field it serves. The goal of this program is to encourage transformative research which applies scientific principles to minimize solid, liquid, and gaseous discharges into land, inland and coastal waters, and air that result from human activity, and to evaluate adverse impacts of these discharges on human health and environmental quality. The program fosters cutting-edge scientific research based on fundamental science for identifying, evaluating, and developing new methods and technologies for assessing the waste assimilative capacity of the natural environment and for removing or reducing conventional and emerging contaminants from polluted air, water and soils. The program is based on four types of engineering tools - - measurement, analysis, synthesis, and design.Along with its related environmental programs (Energy for Sustainability, Environmental Health and Safety of Nanotechnology, and Environmental Sustainability), the program fosters environmental sustainability through pollution control and resource management/conservation, and development of techniques to minimize or avoid generating pollution. Research may be directed toward improving the cost-effectiveness of pollution avoidance, as well as developing new principles for pollution avoidance technologies. Research for new and improved sensors of environmental conditions and innovative waste reduction and recycling processes also are important components of this program.Major areas of interest and activity in the program include:Water and Wastewater Treatment. (Paul Bishop) Develop innovative biological, chemical and physical treatment processes to remove and degrade contaminants from water; produce potable water; convert wastewaters into renovated water suitable for reuse; investigate the use of nanotechnologies in water and wastewater treatment.Emerging Contaminants. (Paul Bishop) Investigate the fate, transport and remediation of potentially harmful emerging contaminants such as pharmaceuticals, endocrine disrupting compounds, and fire retardants. (Please note that research concerning the environmental health and safety of nanomaterials should be submitted to the Environmental Health and Safety of Nanotechnology program.) Water Resources Management. (Geoffrey Prentice) Investigate engineering aspects of urban watersheds, reservoirs, estuaries and storm water management; design and operation of artificial wetlands; biogeochemical and transport processes driving water quality in the aquatic environment.Soil Remediation and Landfills. (Geoffrey Prentice) Focus on remediation techniques for contaminated soils, fate and transport of contaminants in soils, and effective solid waste management in landfills.Air Quality. (Paul Bishop) Develop innovative processes to remove or destroy contaminants from air, including atmospheric, air emissions and indoor air; and measure, model and predict the movement and fate of pollutants in air.Proposals should address the novelty of the concept being proposed, compared to previous work in the field. Also, it is important to address why the novelty might be important in terms of engineering science, as well as to also project the potential impact on society and /or industry of success in the research. The information requested in this paragraph should be included, as a minimum, in the Project Summary of each proposal. The duration of unsolicited awards is generally one to three years. The average annual award size for the program is $100,000. Small equipment proposals of less than $100,000 will also be considered and may be submitted during these windows. Any proposal received outside the announced dates will be returned without review.The duration of Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program awards is five years. The submission deadline for Engineering CAREER proposals is in July every year. Please see the following URL for more information:http://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=503214 Proposals for Conferences, Workshops, and Supplements may be submitted at any time, but must be discussed with the program director before submission. Grants for Rapid Response Research (RAPID) and EArly-concept Grants for Exploratory Research (EAGER) replace the SGER program. Please note that proposals of these types must be discussed with the program director before submission. Further details are available in the PAPPG download..

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