UMBC News | Published: Sep 18, 2024 |By:Catherine Meyers

On September 12, UMBC’s Upal Ghosh, from the Department of Chemical, Biochemical, and Environmental Engineering, was sworn in as a member of the Washington, D.C., mayor’s Leadership Council for a Cleaner Anacostia River (LCCAR). The council consists of 25 high-level government officials, community leaders, and environmental experts who support the vision of a swimmable and fishable Anacostia River. The members meet quarterly to advise the D.C. government on ongoing restoration projects. 

The Anacostia River, which runs from Prince George’s County in Maryland into Washington, D.C., before joining the Potomac River and ultimately flowing into the Chesapeake Bay, has historically suffered from high levels of industrial pollution and contamination from sewage overflow. In recent years, government officials have been making concerted efforts to clean up the river. UMBC was invited to sit on the council, with Ghosh as the representative, based on the university’s key contributions to these clean-up efforts. 

Since 2016, Ghosh and his UMBC colleagues and students have developed innovative methods of measuring contaminants in the river and created models to elucidate where the contaminants come from and how they travel through and accumulate in the water, sediment, and aquatic life, such as fish. Nathalie Lombard, a research assistant professor at UMBC who has played a significant role in the projects, will serve as the alternate representative on the LLCAR when Ghosh cannot attend. 

In addition to his work on the Anacostia, Ghosh and his students have studied and contributed to the cleanup of the waterways throughout Maryland, Delaware, and across the country. “Students learn a lot from being out in the field,” Ghosh says. “They learn how the science and engineering we do helps guide major decisions. Our ultimate goal is making a positive difference in the health of the river, lake, or bay. That gives me a lot of excitement, and it really motivates the students too.”

Read original post via UMBC NEWS: Upal Ghosh Appointed To D.C. Mayor’s Leadership Council For A Cleaner Anacostia River - UMBC

Erick Gutierrez was selected as the recipient of the Young Professionals Award in Upstream and Downstream Processing for his poster “Microscale Chromatography toolkits for rapid screening and purification of therapeutic proteins” presented at the 2019 Orlando Meeting. 

This award recognizes excellence by a non-student member of the BIOT 3M Separation and Purification Sciences Division and ACS-BIOT (American Chemical Society’s Division of Biochemical Technology) for Young Professionals in Upstream & Downstream Processing. This award is given to professionals 35 years of age or younger who present outstanding research in upstream and downstream processing at the poster session as part of the Division of Biochemical Technology (BIOT) programming at the ACS annual meeting.  The 3M Company is the sponsor for this award.

The 2019 BIOT Award for Young Professionals in Upstream & Downstream Processing will be awarded as part of 2020 Spring National Meeting, in Philadelphia, PA from March 22 - 26.

Research Overview: 

Biography:

Erick graduated from UMBC with a Bachelor's degree in Chemical Engineering (’18).  He worked at Center for Advanced Sensor Technology (CAST) located in UMBC, as a Systems Design Engineer focused on the product development of microfluidic devices used for downstream processing of therapeutic proteins.

He began his career in microfluidics by working as the team leader of an undergraduate team in Dr. Govind Rao's sensors class, tasked with developing a microfluidic debubbler for his Bio-MOD project funded by DARPA. He was then offered an internship position in the systems design team of the Bio-MOD project under the mentorship of Dr. Abhay Andar, where he was tasked with optimizing and making the bioprocesses used for the G-CSF purification runs, as well as developing, manufacturing, and validating microfluidic devices for downstream processing.

Upon graduation, he was offered a full-time position as a Research Associate in the Bio-MOD project, joining for the second phase of the project in which we had to optimize our process for animal studies. We developed several microfluidic devices, such as mixers, holders, novel and fully customizable chromatography micro-columns (µcols), and multi-functional integrated chips using thermo-plastic solvent bonding methods and adhesives. Our work for "Low‐cost customizable microscale toolkit for rapid screening and purification of therapeutic proteins," was recently published. (https://doi.org/10.1002/bit.26876) We further expanded our microfluidics research by using wood instead of plastics as our primary material, which led to the publication of “Wood Microfluidics,” published in Analytical Chemistry in 2019.

Mandar Bokare wins Honorable Mentions at 2019 AAAS Student E-poster Competition in the Environment and Ecology category.

Poster Title: Air-Water and Sediment-Water Transfer of PCBs in an Urban River

Mandar Bokare is a CBEE PhD student in Dr. Upal Ghosh's lab.

Utsav Shashvatt won 1st place in the 3 Minute Thesis competition at GEARS and will be traveling to the regional competition later this year.

3MT celebrates the exciting research conducted by PhD students. Developed by The University of Queensland, the exercise cultivates students’ academic, presentation, and research communication skills. The competition supports their capacity to effectively explain their research in three minutes, in a language appropriate to a non-specialist audience.

CBEE Students at GEARS