civil engineering; stormwater infrastructure; climate variability

A watershed year for �鶹��Ƶ sustainability data

Jennifer Pocock — Mon, 30 Jun 2025 16:14:43 +0000

A watershed year for �鶹��Ƶ sustainability data Jennifer Pocock Mon, 06/30/2025 - 12:14

In This Story

An intercollegiate study, in partnership with �鶹��Ƶ's Facilities, analyzes the effects of campus events and weather on local air and water quality.

Maryam Zavareh tests a water sample from the Fairfax Campus. Photo provided.

Major events at �鶹��Ƶ, like graduation ceremonies, basketball games, and �鶹��Ƶ Day are high-water events in student life. But how do they affect the campus ecosystem?

For the past year, with support from the Institute for a Sustainable Earth (ISE), groups of undergraduate and graduate engineering students have worked with university Facilities to sample air and water quality measurements at eight spots across campus. They are studying how human-centered activities like special events and campus construction projects, along with natural events like heavy rainstorms, affect the urban campus environment.

“Fairfax is a very active campus in terms of construction,” said Maryam Zavareh, an expert in environmental engineering who earned her PhD from George �鶹��Ƶ in 2021. “They’re always building something or something is always going on for students.”

Weather is also a factor, she pointed out, and so are projects like rain gardens (also called best management practices or BMPs). “Rain can affect a stream’s turbidity and its dissolved oxygen in a negative way, while BMPs can help quality.”

As part of her PhD program, Zavareh started taking measurements around �鶹��Ƶ Pond and campus streams. She wanted to use machine learning to predict water quality patterns in conjunction with the Maggioni Research Group, a lab run on campus by water resources engineering expert Viviana Maggioni, an associate professor in the Sid and Reva Dewberry Department of Civil, Environmental, and Infrastructure Engineering, and air quality expert Lucas Henneman, an assistant professor in the department. With this ISE grant, Maggioni called Zavareh back to run the project as a consultant.

Starting in May 2024, a new group of students each semester have learned to gather data in the field, work with the instruments, and calibrate them for accurate readings.

“One of the advantages of this project is that students get to go into the field and take measurements,” said Dinesh Neupane, a PhD candidate in civil and environmental engineering and student leader for the project. “That was lacking in my previous programs—students stayed in the labs.”

Neupane is excited for the opportunity to measure air quality—something that hasn’t been done yet on campus—in addition to water. “We want to calibrate the ground data we measure with satellite imagery to see if we can get the imaging to accurately take the readings for us,” he said.

So far, Neupane said that campus events do not have a major effect on water quality. “We think big gatherings will have an effect on air quality, but we don’t have that data yet. We’re still in the process of setting those instruments up.”

This year’s work by Zavareh, Neupane, and their student teams lays the groundwork for future students to analyze their data and carry the research forward. They are proving that ISE’s �鶹��Ƶ as a Living Lab program offers great insights.

Topics

�鶹��Ƶ as a Living Lab

Institute for a Sustainable Earth (ISE)

Department of Civil Environmental and Infrastructure Engineering (CEIE)

environmental engineering

civil engineering; stormwater infrastructure; climate variability

water resource engineering; civil and infrastructure engineering

Jennifer Sklarew

Lynn Tierney — Fri, 04 Aug 2023 17:12:24 +0000

Jennifer Sklarew Lynn Tierney Fri, 08/04/2023 - 13:12

Assistant Professor, Environmental Science & Policy Department, College of Science

Contact Information

Phone Number: 703-993-6177

Email: jsklarew@gmu.edu

Headlines

Engineering with nature: Exploring �鶹��Ƶ's contribution to water conservation
August 1, 2023

Biography

Dr. Jennifer Sklarew brings 30 years of energy and environmental policymaking and analysis to her research and teaching. Dr. Sklarew coordinates the department's MS Concentration in Energy and Sustainability Policy and Science, which she developed. She also teaches graduate and undergraduate energy policy and food-energy-water nexus courses she developed for ESP. Her published and funded work examines how institutional relationships and catastrophic events drive energy and environmental policymaking and change. Specific focal areas for her qualitative research include sustainability and resilience challenges in the energy-water nexus, solutions that leverage food-energy-water-climate interdependencies, and energy system transitions in Japan, India, and China. NPR has quoted Dr. Sklarew as an expert on Japanese energy policymaking change.

Dr. Sklarew currently leads two research projects. The first is to design, build and deploy hydropower micro-turbines on �鶹��Ƶ’s Fairfax campus and analyze technological, ecological, geographical, socio-economic and institutional challenges. Her faculty-student team will use this data to develop potential solutions and lessons learned, to which they will add as they conduct additional pilots in overseas communities facing severe energy and water insecurity. The second project, a collaboration with faculty and students in food/nutrition and engineering, involves research on food, energy, water and climate challenges facing low income, rural communities. Through needs assessments, the project enables collaboration with communities to determine their food, energy and water needs and develop potential solutions.

Read full profile on the College of Science website

Engineering with nature: Exploring �鶹��Ƶ's contribution to water conservation

Shayla Brown — Tue, 01 Aug 2023 14:17:13 +0000

Engineering with nature: Exploring �鶹��Ƶ's contribution to water conservation Shayla Brown Tue, 08/01/2023 - 10:17

In This Story

Celso Ferreira

Jennifer Sklarew

Many people at �鶹��Ƶ do not realize that �鶹��Ƶ Pond is actually there for stormwater management.

That bit of news was delivered by �鶹��Ƶ researcher Jennifer Sklarew during her talk at the recent Head Above the Water event in Washington, D.C.

Planned by �鶹��Ƶ Exhibitions in the School of Art, with collaborators including the DC Department of Energy and Environment, City as Living Laboratory, local artists, and guest speakers, Head Above the Water included a walk along D.C.’s Watts Branch and Oxon Run streams to raise awareness about flooding in those neighborhoods and the flood mitigation programs available to residents.

Stream Restoration project by Facilities runs from Patriot Circle/Aquia Creek Lane to �鶹��Ƶ Pond. Photo by Cristian Torres/Office of University Branding

�鶹��Ƶ is deeply committed to pioneering processes that can answer the grand challenges of water, its responsible management, and sustainability. In fact, the university’s interdisciplinary approach and cutting-edge research as part of its strategic direction, has turned �鶹��Ƶ’s campuses into a Living Lab.

Take what Sklarew, an assistant professor in �鶹��Ƶ’s Department of Environmental Science and Policy, said about �鶹��Ƶ Pond.

“The stormwater channels that look like streams are components of the actual stormwater system,” she said. “The pipes outflow into those streams, and then everything goes into the pond.”

But that is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to what �鶹��Ƶ is doing and accomplishing when it comes to handling water resources on its campuses, using research and technologies that can be applied beyond to the broader community.

At �鶹��Ƶ Square, �鶹��Ƶ Innovation Partners encountered a serious infrastructure issue that posed a frequent stormwater challenge for the surrounding area of the new Fuse at �鶹��Ƶ Square in the heart of Arlington’s Rosslyn-Ballston corridor.

Replacing the culvert required precise coordination with the future building foundation design and intricate sequencing to control the constant flow of stormwater as it was diverted from the old culvert pipes to a new 12 feet wide, 6 feet high box culvert.

Facilities also has an extensive list of mitigation protocols it applies to remove pollutants and control storm runoff flow rates, including Illicit discharge detection and elimination, and construction site runoff control.

�鶹��Ƶ’s stormwater system is monitored by Facilities, which can prohibit projects that might interfere with the system. The university recently completed a stream restoration project on the Fairfax Campus that not only improved the flow of the waterways but added asphalt sidewalks and some lighting so the campus community can enjoy the paths.

Stream Restoration project by Facilities runs from Patriot Circle/Aquia Creek Lane to �鶹��Ƶ Pond. Photo by Cristian Torres/Office of University Branding

Also on the Fairfax Campus, the irrigation system has sensors that register rainfall to control landscape watering. The irrigation system on the Science and Technology Campus evaluates local weather data. Additionally, the campus strives to create more vegetated regions, with green roofs, vegetated gardens and swales. There are also plans to design additional dry and wet retention ponds to reduce stormwater runoff and pollution in our waterways.

Celso Ferreira, an associate professor in �鶹��Ƶ’s Sid and Reva Dewberry Department of Civil, Environmental, and Infrastructure Engineering, calls the approach engineering with nature—taking advantage of what nature already provides and using it efficiently in engineering.

“How can we use nature in a way that benefits society for flood protection other than being detrimental to causing more floods,” said Ferreira, who also heads �鶹��Ƶ’s Flood Hazards Research Lab, a collaboration between multiple �鶹��Ƶ colleges and the university’s Institute for Sustainable Earth. “We’re trying to investigate natural features that can help us in engineering design that we can use to smartly prevent flooding.”

Ferreira also co-directs the Virginia Climate Center, which works with local communities across the commonwealth to support climate resilience, action, and planning for communities. Ferreira said he tries to bring those concepts into the classroom “to make sure that the future engineering workforce that we’re graduating design and implement infrastructure in a way that they’re mindful of natural processes. Then we can use them smartly to prevent flooding.”

For Sklarew, the Head Above the Water event was a natural extension of the outreach work she does as a �鶹��Ƶ faculty member.

Participants during the Head Above the Water walk in D.C. Photo by Shayla Brown/Office of University Branding

“I go into rural communities and talk with them about what they think their challenges are for food, energy, water, and climate, and how to develop solutions that emerge from within the community rather than outside the community,” said Sklarew, who connects her research with environmental justice. “The walk on Oxon Run and Watts Branch is a great example of something like that.”

Topics

Sustainability

Department of Environmental Science and Policy (ESP)

civil engineering; stormwater infrastructure; climate variability

Fuse at �鶹��Ƶ Square

Institute for a Sustainable Earth (ISE)

Virginia Climate Center

�鶹��Ƶ Exhibitions

Research

College of Engineering and Computing

Amber Brown discusses Federal Highway Administration internship

Teresa Donnellan — Thu, 20 Oct 2022 15:07:57 +0000

Amber Brown discusses Federal Highway Administration internship Teresa Donnellan Thu, 10/20/2022 - 11:07

Despite having graduated high school in the teeth of the covid-19 pandemic, Amber Brown has made the most of her time on campus. After a freshman year that was almost entirely remote, Brown felt deprived of a year of involvement in campus life and student organizations. She remembers frantically searching during her sophomore year for a way to gain experience in her field, civil engineering.

“It's actually crazy, because I've always been scared to reach out to teachers, not because they're not open. It's more so because it's just new and uncomfortable. I'd never really done that before, networking with your teacher.”

Brown’s statics teacher mentioned his organization was hiring, which gave Brown the courage to reach out to him.

"I emailed him, and I was like, ‘Hi, I really enjoyed your class today. I heard you were hiring. Is there anything [for me]? If not, I understand.’ He sent me the program [information], and he's like, ‘Yeah, apply, and I'll put a good word in for you.’”

Brown became an intern at the US Department of Transportation Summer Transportation Internship Program for Diverse Groups, or the STIPDG program, run through The Washington Center. She worked on the Climate Challenge Program in the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA).

"I got really lucky,” Brown says, "because my mentor was a lead manager. So it kind of allowed me to see the other side of engineering. I did a lot of organizational skills and management work on [things] like planning, webinars, [and] proposals. I was mirroring project managers.”

She adds, “It was an exciting time, everyone was saying, because Biden was just passing legislation giving out money ... as it relates to anything sustainability.”

The program “relates to tracking greenhouse gases, which is done via an LCA, a life cycle assessment, or an EPD, an environmental project declaration,” Brown explains. In her role, Brown kept tabs on the program’s email inbox, made updates as needed to the program’s website and shared documents, and wrote up meeting agendas and event plans.

"I was in a bunch of meetings ... helping plan webinars to get information out,” she says, adding, “My favorite part was just seeing where states are at as it relates to tracking greenhouse gases. It's kind of crazy, because transportation is the biggest producer of greenhouse gas emission, and doing this is going to allow us to track it, make better aggregates, and all that stuff. So I was able to learn a lot about pavements and design.”

“I definitely think it gave me a lot of insight,” Brown reflects. When asked how the internship influenced her career plans, the junior says, “I'm still trying to figure out which avenue of civil [engineering to pursue], because I didn't realize it was so big.” She explains, “That internship gave me more of the construction management side, which I love. But now I kind of want to get more into...the field engineering side of it, seeing what that is and what that looks like. Then maybe I’ll have a better idea of what I want to do when I graduate.”

Topics

networking

American Society of Civil Engineers

civil engineer

Civil Engineering

civil engineering; stormwater infrastructure; climate variability

CEC internships