March 1-5, 2008 DOE Fellows and ARC Staff Participate in the Department of Energy’s 2009 Waste Management Conference	:: Back To Top ::

Related Information: Detail informaiton about presentation sessions at WM09 Photo Gallery Video

FIU’s DOE Fellows participated in last week’s 2009 Waste Management Symposia in Phoenix, AZ. The Waste Management Symposia is one of the biggest conferences sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy and the American Nuclear Society every year.  A total of 17 FIU students (16 DOE Fellows and one Ph.D candidate student) participated in this year’s Waste Management Symposia and 14 of them presented their research at the Student Poster competition and at various professional poster sessions.

Miss Denisse Aranda (Sr. Mechanical Eng. - DOE Fellow Class of 2007) won 1st place in the student poster competition. Denisse showcased her work on identification, selection, and evaluation of technologies capable of unplugging pipelines at the high level waste tanks found at DOE’s Hanford and Savannah River sites (The Effect of Ultrasound in Dislodging Radioactive Waste from DOE Pipelines).

Miss Leydi Velez (Sr. Industrial Eng. - DOE Fellow Class of 2007) won 1st place for her professional poster session track (Poster Session 66).  Leydi ‘s poster showcased her work on the development of a Decision Analysis Tool for Surveillance & Maintenance of DOE Facilities.

The rest of the students presented their DOE applied research in the areas of soil/groundwater, D&D, and high level waste. The DOE Fellows also participated as Student Assistants at the conference and helped conference organizers and presenters during the technical sessions.

The DOE Fellows also had the opportunity to meet Dr. Ines Triay (DOE’s Principal Assistant Secretary for Environmental Management) and had a chance to describe their research work at FIU’s Applied Research Center and the work they have performed during their internships at DOE sites and national laboratories. One of our DOE Fellows, Denisse Aranda, was featured in the WM Insight Newsletter distributed at the conference

Many of the students also participated in a session entitled “Graduating Students and New Engineers Wants and Needs – Are Companies Even Listening?”  Denisse Aranda was selected as a panelist for this session and she described companies’ web sites that are difficult to navigate and provide little information to students seeking information about the company and job opportunities for interested students. In addition, our DOE Fellows women attended the Women of Waste Management panel and had a chance to interact with a working group of professional women working in the environmental engineering field.

The DOE-FIU Science and Technology Workforce Development Initiative is an innovative program between the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Environmental Management and Florida International University's Applied Research Center designed to create a “pipeline” of minority engineers specifically trained and mentored to enter the Department of Energy workforce in technical areas of need.

This innovative program was designed to help address DOE’s future workforce needs by partnering with academic, government and DOE contractor organizations to mentor future minority scientists and engineers in the research, development, and deployment of new technologies addressing DOE’s environmental cleanup challenges.  Students selected as DOE Fellows perform research at FIU and at a DOE site.  Upon graduation and completion of this fellowship, the students will submit an application to join the DOE EM Professional Development Corps (PDC)  and/or work for DOE contractors.

For additional information, please contact:

Dr. Leonel E. Lagos
DOE Fellows Program Director
lagosl@fiu.edu