The movement to create a desalination research facility to address the need to lower costs of brackish water treatment, to improve performance and to manage the concentrates removed from the water began in 2001 when Congress, through the Desalination Act, directed Reclamation, in cooperation with Sandia National Laboratories, to plan for a desalination research and development facility in the Tularosa Basin of New Mexico.
Sam Fernald was appointed director of the New Mexico Water Resources Research Institute (NM WRRI) in July 2013 after having served as interim director since January 2011. As director, he leads the institute in its mission to develop and disseminate knowledge that will assist the state, region, and nation in solving water resources problems. Professor Fernald also is a faculty member in the Department of Animal and Range Sciences at New Mexico State University. Sam is also the Principal Investigator for the Directed Research under the NMSU/BOR Cooperative Agreement.
Sam’s earned degrees include a 1987 BA in international relations from Stanford University, an MEM. in 1993 in water and air resources from Duke University, and a PhD in watershed science from Colorado State University in 1997. His primary research interests include water quality hydrology; land use effects on infiltration, runoff, sediment yield, and nonpoint source pollution; and effects of surface water/groundwater exchange on water availability and water quality. Sam received a Fulbright Scholarship to Patagonian National University, Trelew, Argentina in 2008, and another Fulbright Scholarship to the University of Concepcion, Concepcion, Chile in 2000.
Lazar began as a Ph.D. student in Fall 2016. He holds a B.Eng. in Mechanical Engineering from the Northern New Mexico College. He previously worked on a variety of research topics in the areas of heat transfer, solar thermal, and sun tracking. He is currently working on his Ph.D. thesis aimed at understanding the physics of boiling heat transfer on binary surfaces, involving microfabrication of omniphilic surfaces for heat transfer enhancements with application in cooling of electronics and solar stills.
Katie Guerra is a chemical engineer at the Bureau of Reclamation in the Water Treatment Group in the Technical Service Center in Denver. She has 16 years of experience in research and design of water treatment technologies. Her work at Reclamation has focused on evaluating the technical, practical, and economic benefits and limitations of utilizing existing and novel water treatment technologies. She also has expertise in water quality assessments and understanding the implications of water quality in the use, storage, and treatment of water supplies. Katie is a project manager and senior engineer and serves as Grants Officer’s Technical Representative for a $5M cooperative agreement between Reclamation and New Mexico State University. She has a bachelor’s degree from the University of Colorado and a Masters and PhD from Colorado School of Mines.
Chris Kubicki is a Master’s student of Dr. Kenneth Carroll’s in the Water Science and Management Graduate Program. Chris’s research interests include geochemistry, hydrology, and geology. Chris received his bachelor’s degree in Environmental Science from Montana State University in 2016. During his bachelor’s, Chris worked for Montana State University, NRCS, and the Montana DEQ as a field technician.
Catherine “Catie” Brewer has always loved chemistry and English, and always wanted to be a teacher, growing up in eastern Washington State then Seattle. She began her undergraduate studies as an English education then a chemistry education major at the Robert E. Cook Honors College at Indiana University of Pennsylvania (in Indiana, PA). Undergraduate research experiences at IUP and a summer NSF REU at Mississippi State University convinced her to pursue a career where she could do research in and teach applied chemistry/chemical engineering. To accomplish this, she finished a B.S. in Chemistry with a minor in Mathematics at IUP, before going on to Iowa State University to complete a PhD. in Chemical Engineering and Biorenewable Resources & Technology with a minor in Soil Science. She is the first in her family to receive a doctoral degree. Prior to joining the faculty in Chemical & Materials Engineering at NMSU in 2013, Dr. Brewer completed a postdoc at Rice University in Houston. She was drawn to NMSU by the opportunities to do cross-disciplinary research connecting engineering and agriculture, to make a difference in the lives of a wide variety of students, and to enjoy the warm, dry climate and great Mexican food of Las Cruces. Her research interests include biomass utilization, waste management, biochar, thermochemical processing, renewable fuels, and sustainable agriculture in arid regions. Outside of work, she spends her time with her husband, two children (3 and 5), dog, and home-brewing equipment to experiment with recipes for NMSBrew, CHME’s new Brewery Engineering program.
Dr. Huiyao Wang is the director of CURRL (Core University Research Resources Lab) at New Mexico State University. He is an expert on Transmission Electron Microscopy, Scanning Electron Microscopy, Atomic Force Microscopy and Confocal Laser Microscopy. His research focuses on materials and nano-materials; photocatalysis and photocatalyst; solar and other energies and energy materials; membrane processes and fouling; and solar still desalination. His research is funded by the Bureau of Reclamation, New Mexico Water Recourses Research institute, Arrowhead Center, College of Engineering and private company.
Dr. Kuravi began as an Assistant Professor of Renewable Energy in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering (MAE) at the New Mexico State University (NMSU) in August 2014. Prior to this, she held an Assistant Professor position at the Florida Institute of Technology. Before joining Florida Tech in August 2012, she worked as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Clean Energy Research Center (CERC), University of South Florida (USF), where she worked under the direct supervision of Prof. Yogi Goswami on one of the foremost efforts involving developing high-temperature thermal energy storage systems for concentrating solar power plants. She obtained her M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Central Florida in 2006 and 2009 respectively under the guidance of Prof. Louis Chow. Dr. Kuravi’s research expertise is on the study and analysis of flow and heat transfer in renewable/alternative/clean energy systems with focus on concentrating solar power, thermal and thermochemical/hydrogen storage, water desalination, combined heat and power (CHP), advanced heat transfer fluids, and thermal systems applications. Her recent/current projects were/are funded by USBR/NM-WRRI, NCHR, NASA/NMSGC, and industry. The projects she previously worked on were funded by agencies such as DOE, ARPA-E, ONR, AFRL, and E-ON. She is the author/co-author of more than 27 publications in the form of journal papers and refereed conference proceedings. She serves as a reviewer for nine international journals in the areas of renewable energy and thermal sciences, and served as an international scientific committee member, track organizer, session organizer, and technical poster judge at several international conferences. She is a member of ASME, AIAA, ISES, and SWE
Dr. Pei Xu is an Associate Professor in environmental engineering at New Mexico State University. Her research focuses on water and wastewater engineering; membrane processes and fouling; desalination; potable and non-potable water reuse; produced water treatment; advanced oxidation and disinfection; biological and bioelectrochemical processes; removal of emerging contaminants, food-water-energy nexus. Her research is primarily funded by the Bureau of Reclamation, National Science Foundation, Department of Energy, United States Geological Survey, New Mexico Water Recourses Research institute, water utilities, and private sectors.
Julie Korak, Ph.D., P.E. is an Environmental Engineer specializing in water treatment at the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation in Denver, CO. She works on a projects addressing drinking water treatment challenges for small communities and developing novel treatment processes to manage water treatment residuals and agricultural drainage. Julie also studies the photophysics of natural organic matter (NOM), which is found in all water sources, to develop of optical sensors for real-time monitoring. Julie holds degrees in Chemical (B.S.), Environmental (B.S.) and Civil (M.S. and Ph.D.) Engineering, all from the University of Colorado Boulder. She is also a licensed Professional Engineer in Colorado.
Anthony Kennedy grew up in Pittsburgh and moved to Colorado in 2006 to attend the University of Colorado at Boulder for civil engineering. He earned all three degrees (BS, MS, PhD) at CU and studied granular activated carbon adsorption of organic micropollutants under Dr. R. Scott Summers. Following graduation he worked for Denver Water for a year before coming to the Bureau of Reclamation, where he has been since spring of 2015. In his free time he enjoys skiing and trail running.
Project Title: Water-energy supply with desalination in Lower Rio Grande
The Lower Rio Grande Planning regional water balance model is built for regional surface water-groundwater connection as part of regional water-energy nexus model to explore water management strategy in rural and urban area.
Holding a Ph.D. in system dynamics and economics from Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI), Saeed Langarudi is currently a postdoctoral research scientist at the New Mexico Water Resources Research Institute, New Mexico State University. His research is focused on system dynamics modeling of socioeconomic development issues in arid and semi-arid regions. Saeed has taught economics and system dynamics and conducted research at WPI’s Healthcare Delivery Institute and Boston’s Veterans Affairs (VA) Healthcare System. Since 2015 he has been serving the System Dynamics Society as the chair of the security thread of the International System Dynamics Conference.
Project Title: Evaluating the Sustainability of Desalination Implementation and Management in the Binational Santa Teresa, NM Community
This study is developing a system dynamics model to account for interdependent environmental, social, and economic factors that dynamically affect the sustainability of inland desalination implementation and management for the greater Santa Teresa, NM region.
Prior to his tenure in 2011, the City had close to 50 negative audit findings. That number has now been reduced to ZERO, since 2016, ranking Sunland Park as having one of the top financial audits in the State of New Mexico.
In addition to his mayoral responsibilities, Mayor Perea currently serves on the El Paso Metropolitan Planning Organization, South Central Council of Governments, South Central Regional Transit District, Mesilla Valley Regional Dispatch Authority, New Mexico Municipal League Policy/Resolutions Committee, Camino Real Consortium, and the U.S. Conference of Mayors.
Mayor Perea continues to address the City’s many challenges and remains focused on strategic management, organization, planning, finance, economic development, transportation and infrastructure.
Lin Chen is a PhD student at New Mexico State University in the Civil Engineering Department. He received a BS and MS in Environmental Engineering from the Nanjing Forestry University in 2006 and 2009, respectively. He has previous experience working in several companies focusing on nutrition recovery projects research and biological wastewater treatment projects as an engineer between 2009 and 2017. He has several publications on subjects related to his research interests.
Sahar is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering at NMSU. She started her research on innovative techniques for water treatment. Her research focus is on developing membranes using templating approach. Pluronic block copolymers self-assemble at water/oil interface and form different mesostructures. Such self-assembled systems can be used as templates. Sahar also received FY16 NM WRRI Student Water Research Grant ($6000) to conduct research on antibacterial aerogels for water treatment. Currently, she is making antibacterial membranes with controllable pore size. Such membranes have applications in water and wastewater treatment, the food industry, and the pharmaceutical industry.
Alireza got his Bachelor and Master degrees from the chemical engineering department of Iran University of Science and Technology (IUST). Currently, he is a PhD student at New Mexico State University (NMSU). Of the many fields in chemical engineering, he is especially interested in Nano- and micro- structured material. His research involves synthesizing the porous polymeric membrane using the self-assembly of block copolymers. By polymerizing the precursor in the system and removing the surfactant one can make membranes with porous structure in the nanometer size range. He is trying to improve the efficiency of the membrane for wastewater treatment by controlling and adjusting the size and orientation of pores within the membrane and improving the antifouling properties of the membrane by using nanoparticles in the system.
Greg Daviet came to Las Cruces in 1994 to run his family’s pecan farm and has been in production agriculture for over 20 years now. He earned a degree in Ag Economics in 1996 from NMSU. Greg has been an active leader in the Ag community volunteering in many positions and boards over the years. He is currently a board member of Elephant Butte Irrigation District, Dona Ana County Farm Bureau, and Western Pecan Growers Association.
Greg has been a long-time believer that if farmers can get the water right, the rest becomes easier. In keeping with that, he has devoted significant personal time and energy into this topic, including developing his own software program to schedule his pecan irrigations. He strives to continue to learn more every day.
