Evolving from my initial and ongoing interests in the treatment and removal of hazardous materials from drinking and groundwater, my personal research interests span a breadth of topics under the broad theme of sustainability. These include pollution prevention, physical-chemical processes, nanotechnology, air and water treatment, mass transfer, and numerical methods. With insight gained into how these processes interconnect with each other, and with people, markets, and nature, I am most interested right now in tools and educational programs that connect social decision making, regional development, material flows, energy use, and local, regional, and global environmental impacts.

To provide the knowledge and tools that enable the creation of an anthrosphere [the part of the earth’s system that is made or modified by humans for use in human activities] that exists within the means of nature. That is, humans should only use resources that nature can provide and generate wastes that nature can assimilate.

One idea involves bioreforming or the use of biological agents to produce fuels and chemicals in an environmentally responsible manner.

The Brook Byers Institute for Sustainable Systems at Georgia Tech offers an unprecedented opportunity to work with a broad range of individuals and groups from academia, business and industry, government, and non-profits to remediate the past, transform the present, and design the future for the benefit of people, the environment, and the economy. And as a state, Georgia is a favorable place for new ideas to seed and take root. To have the opportunity to conduct cutting edge research, have it widely acknowledged, and to see it directly applied is both satisfying and invaluable. I look forward to seeing Georgia at the forefront of a sustainable 21^st Century.