Professor receives 2019 AAEES Superior Achievement Award
Dr. Yang Deng received the award for his project studying emergency water treatment with ferrate(VI) in response to natural disasters.
Posted in: Awards & Recognition, CSAM Research, Earth & Environmental Studies
As a Superior Achievement Award recipient, Dr. Deng will deliver a presentation at the National Press Club in the 2019 American Academy of Environmental Engineers & Scientists (AAEES) Awards Luncheon and Conference in Washington, DC this April.
AAEES’s Excellence in Environmental Engineering and Science™ (E3S) Awards Competition, began in 1989, exists to identify and reward the best of today’s environmental engineering and science. Its criteria define what it takes to be the best in environmental engineering and science practices: a holistic environmental perspective, innovation, proven performance and customer satisfaction, and contribution to an improved quality of life and economic efficiency.
All the nominated projects are judged in nine different categories (design, environmental sustainability, industrial waste practice, operation/management, planning, research, small firms, small projects, and university research) by an independent panel of distinguished experts in environmental engineering and environmental science using a scoring system. The Superior Achievement Award is presented to the highest scoring project in the competition, regardless of category.
Frequency and magnitude of natural disasters (e.g. hurricanes) have increased globally. Clean water is a top priority after catastrophic disasters for survival and disaster relief. Recent Puerto Rican water crisis following Hurricane Maria highlights emergency water treatment (EWT) research needs. Dr. Deng’s group employed a holistic approach to develop a new, safe, resilient, affordable, and easy-to-use EWT, at a community or household scale, with ferrate(VI) (an emerging and multi-functional treatment agent). The invented EWT can simultaneously remove multiple contaminants in disaster-polluted waters to meet with survival demands of disaster-affected populations and prevent infectious disease outbreaks. This research is supported by PSEG Institute for Sustainability Studies (PSEG ISS) and New Jersey Water Resources Research Institute (NJWRRI).
About Dr. Yang Deng
Dr. Deng is an environmental engineer with strong fundamental and applied research interests in the development of innovative and sustainable solutions to addressing various water pollution challenges. He is a licensed environmental engineer registered in Florida. His group has been supported from different funding sources. Over the past fourteen years, he has authored and co-authored over 110 peer-reviewed journal articles with an overall citation number of 5,600+. He is also the recipient of 2018 Nanova Frontier Research Award from the Chinese-American Professors in Environmental Engineering and Science (CAPEES) Society. Prior to joining Montclair State University, he was a faculty in the Civil Engineering Department at University of Puerto Rico, where he was named the University Distinguished Professor in 2009-2010.