The Newsletter of the EES program at Stanford University

Issue 12 • Winter, 2013

Also in this Issue: Mango Materials wins the Postcode •Lottery Green ChallengeDr. John Dabiri, Visiting Professor•The Wastewater Resources Recovery •Test FacilityOur new CEE manager•

EES Newsletter Julie Stevens, Editor 473 Via Ortega, Room 159 Stanford, CA 94305 650-736-2274

E n v i r o n m e n t a l E n g i n e e r i n g & S c i e n c e

Susie Stone retires... after 42 years in the CEE Department

In June, friends and colleagues braved the summer heat to celebrate Susie Stone’s retirement and commemorate her many years of service. She had arrived at Stanford in 1970, a young, single mother who, not long before, had driven to California from Huntington, Long Island with her sister in a tiny Triumph TR4 packed with their belongings. After working at Lawrence Berkeley Labs and the UCSF Medical Center, she took a secretarial position in Stanford’s Civil Engineering department. Forty-two years later, she is now retired from her post as Department Manager, one she held for nearly thirty years. The party was held at the park on the site of the Terman Engineering Center (the building was demolished in 2011), a place that symbolized the department’s evolution during her long career. Susie’s first office was in the old Engineering Corner, just beside the clock tower; in 1977, the Department relocated to the Terman building and remained there till its final move to Y2E2 in 2008.

By Hannah Doyle

Susie surrounded by seven CEE Department Chairmen whom she supported over the years. L to R: Stephen Monismith, current Chair; Jeff Koseff, Haresh Shah, Bob Street, Perry McCarty,

Bob Tatum and Dick Luthy. Gil Masters was traveling but sent his best wishes.

Continued on P.4

2 EES Newsletter

Mango Materials is a small start-up company with a sustainable goal: to produce biodegradable plastics from waste methane gas. The company grew out of research started at Stanford under the guidance of Professors Craig Criddle (EES) and Sarah Billington (SEG). Molly Morse’s research was focused on biodegradation of plastics; Allison Pieja’s on producing sustainable plastics. The Eureka moment for their collaboration came when they realized they could “close the loop” by producing their plastic from methane and then degrading it back to methane at the end of its useful life; the possibility of a “closed-loop” life cycle sparked Professor Criddle’s interest.

The idea of establishing a company evolved after graduation while Morse was working as a technical consultant at a VC firm. That experience showed her that an MBA degree wasn’t necessary to start a company, and a year later, she incorporated Mango Materials. The mission of the company is to build on research conducted at bench scale and to create sustainable plastic products using methane, one of the most potent greenhouse gases. The Mango Materials process uses bacteria to transform methane into biopolymer poly-hydroxyalkanoate, using a patent- protected process. The bioplastic that is produced is both biodegradable and affordable, and can be made into

products such as toys, packaging, and agricultural and construction materials. After use, these products can be sent to a landfill or a digester where the methane produced from the decomposition of the item can be returned to re-nter the microbial process. The scaled-up costs will be low, allowing it to ultimately compete with petroleum–based plastics. The company has already successfully completed a field trial using waste biogas from an anaerobic digester at a wastewater treatment plant.

The Dutch Postcode Lottery has been investing 50% of its profits for decades in projects that benefit the earth. In 2006, influenced by Bill Clinton and his concerns about global warming, it introduced an annual competition specifically for entrepreneurs seeking funding to implement their ideas on sustainability and reducing CO2 emissions. Morse first heard of the Dutch Postcode Lottery from Bridgett Luther, former Director of the California Department of Conservation, who had been instrumental in getting the Cal-EPA to fund Craig Criddle’s bioplastic research at Stanford in 2007. To apply for the Postcode Lottery Green Challenge, the entire Mango Materials team worked frantically to complete an intense application that consisted of many introspective short-answer questions. Several weeks after submitting the application, Mango

Materials was contacted with follow-up questions from the Postcode Lottery Geen Challenge organizers, and Morse was subsequently invited to Amsterdam to present before the Postcode committee. In Amsterdam, Mango Materials was chosen as one of three finalists, and the whole team traveled to New York City for the announcement of the winner at a dinner held in conjunction with the Clinton Global Initiative on September 23, 2012. After business pitches by the three finalists, Mango Materials was announced as the winner of the first prize, 500,000 Euros, sending the team into a flurry of excitement.

Morse serves as CEO of Mango Materials and Pieja works as Director of Technology. Another important contributor to the company is Anne Schauer-Gimenez, Director of biological Research, who holds a Ph.D. from Marquette University, where she studied anaerobic digestion under Dan Zitomer. Mango Materials is currently partnering with two local organizations to conduct its research and development. The U.S. Dept. of Agriculture (USDA) is particularly interested in producing polymers and creating value from waste methane, and Mango Materials works out of the USDA facility in Albany, CA, which is home to a world-class polymer and fermentation laboratory.

Methane to Biodegradable Plastics...

Mango Materials wins the Postcode Lottery Green

Challenge Sustainable Business Plan Competition Jose Maria Fiqueres of Postcode Lottery,

Molly, Allison and Anne at the award ceremony

Continued over --->

EES Newsletter 3

Mango Materials also has a prototype bioreactor at a field test site at the South Bayside Systems Authority in Redwood City.

When asked about her move from laboratory research into business, Morse explains that what they do now is industrial research, concerned with scalability, cost and meeting customers’ needs. Her involvement in the actual research is limited to technical meetings, and she spends most of her time on the business side of her work, being a CEO. Having access to local facilities through partnerships saves the company money, but potential fundraising is foremost in her mind. The company is currently operating using its initial funding, a National Science Foundation Small Business Innovation in Research (NSF SBIR) Phase I grant. Receiving such a competitive and prestigious grant was an honor and their first great success for the company; it gave the company legitimacy. The NSF Program Director was shocked when he met the entrepreneurs at a conference and realized how young they were, as many researchers receive NSF SBIR funding after lengthy careers. The recent Postcode award of 500,000 Euros will provide additional funding to help the company continue to grow and develop over the next two years.

Stanford is recognized as a leading center of innovation and

entrepreneurship and Mango Materials is proud to be following in that

tradition by leveraging the research and technology that emerged from the

CEE program.

Molly, Allison and Anne--with the prize converted into USD

Environmental Science and TechnologyThe Nature and Future of Water

Science and Engineering Problem Solving with MatlabWater Resources Management

New Indicators of Well-being & SustainabilitySmart Cities & Communities

Seminar: Issues in Environmental Engineering, Science & Sustainability

ewssummer.stanford.edu

4 EES Newsletter

Eight former Department Chairs and other friends spoke in her honor at the party. They referred repeatedly to her as the “backbone” of Civil and Environmental Engineering, the person “at home making everything work,” enabling professors and students to teach, research, and cross and re-cross the globe for four decades. She worked under nine chairmen, from James Gere, co-founder of Stanford’s Blume Center, to the department’s current chair, Stephen Monismith.

Susie’s arrival coincided with the blossoming of the environmental movement in the 70s and establishment of the environmental engineering program within the Civil Engineering department. (Susie’s first visit to Yosemite was with Gere, who had organized a student group: “We hiked for miles with ‘Ranger Jim’ that weekend.”). Emphasis on environmental issues influenced even her daughter, Laura Springsteen, who, as a toddler, would accompany her mother to the office, sitting on the laps of students and professors; she works today in Salt Lake City as an environmental consultant and National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) Planner. Springsteen remembers the dinners for the environmental students

Susie would hold in her home, “the smallest little two bedroom house you can imagine.” Susie’s friend, Kim Hadj-Hamou, commented that by the time she retired, Susie had been a mother “to 16,000 students.”

Bob Street became chair in 1972, bringing a secretary along with him; he refers to that year as the “Coups of ’72,” when Susie almost lost her job because of this possible replacement. But she remained, and save for briefly considering work in the Engineering Research Administration (ERA) in the late 70s , she never left the department.

She helped Street edit a journal, working with “just a typewriter and 3 x 5 cards.” The equipment used then would be unrecognizable in an office now: typewriters, adding machines, carbon copies, spreadsheets generated by typewriters, and ditto machines. The work was more painstaking, but things

were, she insists, simpler and perhaps better. Haresh Shah, chairman from 1985 to 1994, recalls the students who, at that time, would congregate near her desk in the front office to admire her, “this beautiful woman with the crazy red hair.” As she gradually accepted more responsibility, she found she had to instruct new chairs. “[Susie] made us look good,” Shah said, playfully adding, “We had no clue what was going on.”

She was promoted to Department Manager under Perry McCarty, chairman from 1980 to 1985, who did not want to face the prospect of losing her to the ERA. During the 1980s Word Processors and PC computers were introduced, the first major adjustment that foreshadowed the vast technological changes of the 90s and early 2000s. In the 80s however, financial and other tasks were still done mainly on printed spreadsheets. Susie recalls Shah’s incredible ability to calculate and interpret finances by just glancing at the spreadsheets she prepared for him as they struggled to balance the budget each year and “close the books.”

Jeff Koseff followed Shah, serving from 1995 to 1999. He claims Susie told him with teasing affection at the beginning of his chairmanship, “Whatever you do, do the opposite of what Haresh would’ve done.” Koseff believes Susie changed his life when she conspired to set him up with his wife, Thalia Agnagnos, through their weekend doubles-tennis matches.

During Bob Tatum’s chairmanship, 1999-2002, Susie led the acquisition of improved IT equipment for the faculty and staff.

“[Susie] made us look good,” Shah said, playfully adding, “We had no clue what was going on.”Continued from Page 1

EES Newsletter 5

She labored to prevent CEE’s programs from becoming isolated from one another and to keep the department “in the good graces of the School of Engineering.” Tatum added, “I can remember some summers when Susie worked really, really late nights and then had to argue all day long about the budget-input the department had made.” Tatum credits Susie with practically creating a BeWell Program long before Stanford did. Many friends attest to the innumerable walks, “little fourteen-mile hikes in Huddard,” tennis matches, and ski excursions to Bear Valley that she organized.

Dick Luthy succeeded Tatum in 2003, the same year Stanford implemented the Oracle Accounting Systems (OAS) and faced other rapid technological changes. Mention alone of the transition to OAS elicited groans from the party’s crowd. Susie affirms that, after 2003, she never went anywhere without her computer, a reality that seems commonplace now but proved then to be a major upheaval in her life. She admits now that, as time passed, her job became “more and more about administration, and less and less about the students. And I missed that.”

Gregarious, empathic, Susie is quick to make friends, many of whom remember first meeting her when she struck up conversations with them in the Stanford locker rooms or in the office. Many spoke enthusiastically of her gifts as a cook, and of how invitations to her dinners were prized both for the food she prepared and for her company. In 1990, Susie married Jim Leckie, whom she had met in 1970 when he came as an acting assistant professor of environmental engineering.

She came to Stanford with talent and diligence, and progressed to Department Manager despite harboring no original ambition for it. “You just do it,” she insists, referring to tasks that initially seemed beyond her but which she taught herself to master. Susie is proudest of raising her daughter and of rallying continually for the staff, whom she still regards as “my guys.” Springsteen affirms, “I think she has always been very passionate about the university, the department, and her work there.”

In response to the wealth of good wishes and reminiscences at her party, Susie stated with feeling that “There’s no way I could’ve stayed here this long if we didn’t have the best faculty, and the best students, and the best staff.”

“There’s no way I could’ve stayed here this long if we didn’t have the best faculty, and the best students, and the best staff.”

6 EES Newsletter

Much is happening regarding the proposed Wastewater Resources Recovery Test Facility described in the previous newsletter when it was known as the Test Bed facility. As currently envisioned the facility, now called the Resource Recovery Research Center, will serve as a test bed for the study of resource recovery from a wide variety of materials including food and yard waste and will be a research and teaching center for faculty and researchers across the School of Engineering and throughout Stanford. In addition the facility will provide a platform where industry and others can take the step from bench to pilot scale.

The ambitious and forward thinking project is still in the planning stage, but a great deal of progress is being made, led by members of the Stanford-Palo Alto Water Team:

>Professor Craig Criddle (EES)

>Professor David Freyberg (EFMH)

>Marty Laporte, Associate Director of Utilities for Water Resources and Environmental Quality, Stanford

>Tom Zigterman, Associate Director of Water Services and Civil Infrastructure, Stanford

>Phil Bobel, Environmental Compliance Division Manager, City of Palo Alto.

Other groups involved include senior research staff, graduate students, and the NSF Engineering Research Center (ReNUWIt).

For Environmental and Water Studies (EWS) faculty and researchers and Stanford Utilities the test facility will: help prepare for future recycled water production at Stanford University; provide a site for pilot-scale testing of wastewater treatment and resource recovery systems; facilitate fundamental research; and provide students with practical, hands-on training.

It is a multi-faceted project, and every one of the goals will greatly advance water research, but one of the most important contributions will be pilot-scale testing of promising technologies, providing the necessary link between lab and full scale. The water industry is conservative; building treatment facilities is expensive, they are expected to last 40-50 years, and they must be reliable. In the absence of solid evidence garnered from well designed testing, at scale, new design ideas that could improve operations, benefit the environment and reduce costs will not be implemented. The test bed facility will bridge the gap between laboratory testing of new ideas, and their large-scale implementation; it will test these ideas in a “real world” setting at the pilot scale. What’s more it will be the only such facility in the U.S. Its location on the Stanford campus, essentially a city with real wastewater

to experiment on, will provide a vital bridge to a sustainable water future.

Among the challenges now is developing a business plan for the facility that will allow it to be self-sustaining. Related questions include how to fund operational staff needed to operate the facility, determining what equipment will be needed to run the facility, and how to accommodate groups not affiliated with Stanford who may wish to use the facility. Indeed a consulting group that deals with hospital wastes, and wants to establish its own treatment facility, has already approached the group about using the test bed to pilot its ideas. Another possible candidate is the piloting of Prof. Perry McCarty’s project now at Inha University, South Korea. This project would be of great interest to American engineers, introducing them to wastewater treatment in a different geographic and cultural area of the world. With encouragement from the School of Engineering (SOE) the vision for the facility now includes resource recovery from sources other than wastewater, such as biomass.

The University has shown its interest in the expanded concept, and has assigned staff from the Department of Project Management to take the work of the Stanford-Palo Alto Water Team, incorporate the needs of additional research groups and generate a detailed design.

WastewaterResources Recovery Test Facility

EES Newsletter 7

Professor of Aeronautics and Bioengineering at California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, Dabiri was here for 6 months of his sabbatical year working with Parviz Moin, Professor of Mechanical Engineering, and Professors Stephen Monismith and Jeff Koseff of the Environmental Fluid Mechanics & Hydrology (EFMH) program. His research during the sabbatical was focused on wind energy problems; how to design wind farms that will produce energy at a lower cost, while reducing their environmental impacts. His concentration is on smaller, 30 ft. tall, vertical-axis wind turbines. The plan is to use many of these smaller structures instead of of---or perhaps underneath---the familiar, large windmill design. Because of their small size, the turbines reduce operating noise, visual impacts,

increase in number, others dwindle. These changes could be correlated to local climate changes, giving Dabiri’s studies of the esoteric animals added relevance

Upon moving to Caltech for graduate training, he studied fluid mechanics for his masters degree and the physics of vortex formation for the Ph.D. , but once he moved on to the faculty there, he returned to the study of jellyfish. He began to develop theories on the connections between jellyfish and underwater vehicles, between the currents jellyfish create and blood flow in the human body, and on early diagnosis of heart failure from the study of blood flow currents in the heart’s left ventricle. This research helps him appreciate the importance of fluid mechanics, but his field work studying marine animals in the ocean is a constant reminder for him of how little we know about the oceans that are vital to the health of the earth.

Dabiri enjoyed his time at Stanford, the time spent at the lab bench (a rare opportunity he has little time for within his normal schedule) and particularly the broad range of contacts developed, and exposure to complementary fields like biogeochemistry, fluid mechanics, and policy issues. The last six months of his sabbatical will be spent back on campus at Caltech, but he will still be commuting periodically to Stanford to collaborate with his contacts here.

and greatly limit the impact on bats and birds, especially raptors and species whose migration paths intersect with the wind farms.

In his work with Dr. Moin, Dabiri concentrated on numerical simulations of air flow through large arrays of the small vertical-axis wind turbines. With Koseff and Monismith, he worked with the flume in the Environmental Fluid Mechanics Laboratory where he was able to create scale models reproducing flows similar to wind flows. At Caltech he has a field research site to experiment with turbines under naturally-occuring wind conditions. At Stanford, he was pleasantly surprised by the effectiveness of the flume model for the same purpose, and this experience has given Dabiri, Koseff and Monismith new insights into the similarities between water flow through aquatic canopies and airflow through wind farms, via their overlap in the basic physics of a problem.

As an undergraduate at Princeton Dabiri had chosen a major in mechanical and aerospace engineering, with rockets and aircraft in mind. However, an internship at Caltech opened his eyes to the biological aspects of engineering and inspired him to delve further into how animals function. He was studying jellyfish, the first animals to swim and the survivors of mass extinctions over the millions of years of evolution. Why have they been so successful? They use very little energy to move around the ocean. Which princples of biomechanics enable them to do so and how might we replicate this? Jellyfish also are potential indicators of the ocean environment; at times groups

John Dabiri, Senior Fellow in the Center for Turbulence Research at Stanford.

Environmental Engineering & Science (EES)

Jerry Yang & Akiko Yamazaki Environment & Energy Building 473 Via Ortega - Room 159 Stanford, CA 94305

July 5, 2012, Ryan’s first day in his new position, was also his first venture outside the School of Humanities & Sciences in his 10 years at Stanford. He had started out as coordinator of a humanities postdoctoral fellowship program, a job he took after departing the doctoral program in the English Department here at Stanford. He then served as assistant manager in a humanities division before joining Classics as department manager. In nearly four years in Classics, he led successful efforts to double the number of undergraduates as well as grow the doctoral cohort, and has now accepted a new challenge as manager of the larger Civil & Environmental Engineering Department.

He acknowledges the many differences between CEE and Classics but is confident his past experience as a manager in an academic department will be transferable.

There will be much to learn but also much to contribute in personal expertise, expectations and objectives. One goal is to facilitate online access to information for faculty, saving them time by freeing them from administrative tasks.

He is also engaged in revisiting Web services and improving CEE’s online presence as well as overseeing major upgrades to the student computer clusters. Team building for the staff, and increasing undergraduate enrollment in the department are two other important goals.

Ryan was born in Mountain View and grew up in the Bay Area. His work experience before Stanford makes for a colorful resume, including jobs as a barista, selling fur coats at Saks Fifth Avenue, working on a ferry, and working for a small newspaper

And now introducing our new CEE department manager -- Ryan Johnson

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