Lauren Barton will defend her thesis about "Fate and Transformation of Metal-Oxide NPs in Wastewater Treatment", on Friday, February the 28th. In the recent past, she was awarded a 2011 Chateaubriand Fellowship to conduct research at a French Institution and received the 2013 Jeffrey B. Taub Environmental Engineering Graduate Student Award. She is co-advised by Mark Wiesner at Duke University, and Jean-Yves Bottero and Mélanie Auffan at the CEREGE (Aix-Marseille Université).
Her doctoral studies have combined experimental and computational methods to predict environmentally relevant concentrations of NPs in wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) and Land application uses (LAUs). Her experimental efforts allow us to know more about NP concentration and transformation dynamics. Computationally she has developed probabilistic exposure models that track NP fate and transport through WWTPs into effluent and biosolids and then through biosolid application to agricultural lands. These results contributes to know more about limitation of nanomaterial release from nanoproducts throughout the life cycle as one of the prioritary research actions leaded through Labex SERENADE.
Lauren Barton will certainly go further, as she plans to take a postdoctoral position at Rice University.
