September 2009 DOE Fellow, Rosa Ramirez Hired by DOE

When Rosa emigrated from Peru 9 years ago, she had no idea that her professional career would begin as a Federal Employee for the U.S. Department of Energy. She didn’t know that she would complete a Bachelors and a Masters degree at FIU. This past July, while doing an internship at DOE Headquarters in Maryland, she was selected from among 800 applicants from across the U.S. to be part of DOE’s Professional Development Corps Program, an employment program that trains future leaders of the U.S. Department of Energy.

At 15, Rosa moved with her family to Miami, where she successfully completed high school at St. Brendan’s High School. She was awarded the Bright Future Florida Medallion scholarship which she maintained throughout the course of her undergraduate education at FIU. In December 2008, Rosa was awarded a bachelor's degree in Biomedical Engineering with a minor in Mechanical Engineering Design. She is currently pursuing a master's degree in Environmental Engineering at FIU.

In the summer of 2008, Rosa became part of the DOE-FIU Science & Technology Workforce Development Initiative directed by Dr. Leonel Lagos. This unique program is designed to build upon a long DOE/FIU relationship by creating a pipeline of minority engineers specifically trained and mentored to enter the Department of Energy workforce in technical areas. The objective of the program is to provide FIU minority students with a unique opportunity to integrate course work, DOE field work, and applied, hands-on research at FIU’s Applied Research Center (ARC) into a well structured student developmental program. By working at ARC under this program, FIU students have the unique opportunity to work on real life environmental challenges faced by the DOE.

As a DOE fellow, Rosa worked at ARC, where she was able to use her chemistry background to aid in the modeling of mercury distribution in soil and groundwater in support of the Oak Ridge Reservation mercury remediation strategy. In this project, she evaluated the potential merits of a liquid-liquid extraction treatment system using three different miscible surfactants to be able to develop new bioremediation technologies and techniques. (The oil-based surfactants have a great affinity to mercury, therefore when mixed with mercury contaminated aqueous solution, the surfactants will remove the mercury. Because the oily surfactant is miscible in water, they will naturally separate creating a oily layer containing mercury, and a mercury-free water layer. This process is to be scaled up for its possible application in East Fork Poplar Creek at Oak Ridge, TN. In addition, she studied mercury speciation in contaminated watershed soils in East Fork Poplar Creek (EFPC) located at Oak Ridge, TN. The objective of the project was to analyze Hg speciation and the factors controlling it to establish a correlation between total Hg and Hg species with total organic carbons (TOC), major metals and sulfur and determine the effects of these factors on Hg content in soil. Soil as it is found in nature, is made up of different metals, and sulfur amongst other components. It has been theorized that some of these metals contained in soil have a great affinity to mercury; therefore, if we target these metals to release the mercury they have bounded to, a new remediation technique can be developed to clean up the mercury contaminated soil. She presented the study’s results at the Waste Management 2009 Conference in Phoenix, AZ.

In the summer of 2009, Rosa participated in a summer internship at DOE Headquarters in Germantown, MD as part of the DOE-FIU Science & Technology Workforce Development Program at FIU. She worked for the Office of Groundwater and Soil under the supervision of Skip Chamberlain and Dr. Karen Skubal. Rosa assisted in managing and coordinating mercury-related research and remediation activities for DOE’s Oak Ridge Reservation in Tennessee. Concurrently, she reviewed project proposals examining evidence such as past performance of the proposed technology and the conditions under which it was used, assessing its limitations and any problems that may have occurred. This information was used to determine whether or not the proposal is likely to achieve its stated goals under the proposed conditions and to ascertain its eligibility for resources allocation. In addition, Rosa was involved in revising the 2009 DOE Groundwater Plume Maps booklet and associated Groundwater Database. This booklet is annually compiled by the Office of Engineering & Technology and will show the characteristics of contaminant plumes as well as the status of contamination and remedial approaches at major DOE sites to aid in the decision making for remediation prioritization. This booklet shows the physical characteristics of every contaminated plume (bodies of water) in all the DOE sites throughout the country. With each contaminated plume it will specify all the contaminants present, the amount and concentration of these contaminants, the water flow rate at the plume, etc. This compilation of information will aid, engineers, scientists and researchers to make better decisions as to what technology must be applied and how should it be applied in the different sites.

During her internship at DOE Headquarters, Rosa was encouraged to apply to the Environmental Management Professional Development Corps (EMPDC) program. Thanks to the aid and support of Dr. Leonel Lagos from ARC/FIU, and her supervisors and mentors at DOE, she was accepted into the EMPDC program which begins on September 14 at DOE Headquarters in Washington, DC.

Secretary of Energy, Dr. Steven Chu & DOE Fellow, Rosa Ramirez