The Vision of the Environmental and Water Studies Program, March, 2001
1. The Vision of the Environmental and Water Studies Program
The Stanford Environmental and Water Studies Program has a long and distinguished
record of leadership in teaching, research, and service. Our objective is to develop
solutions to paramount environmental problems and to sustain a world-class, preeminent
program in education and research in the disciplines of environmental engineering and
science, and environmental fluid mechanics and hydrology. We seek to train versatile
students capable of working in diverse and ever-changing settings, and we accomplish
this by developing tools, ideas, and knowledge that cut across disciplinary boundaries,
providing solutions with general applicability for complex environmental problems.
The achievements of the Environmental and Water Studies Program at Stanford are built
on a tradition of complementary investigations comprising laboratory studies, field work,
and computational modeling. These three elements are and remain essential to the future
of the program. In order to advance these elements, we adapt breakthroughs in the allied
sciences, and seek collaborations at the interfaces between disciplines. Examples include
the microbiology, biochemistry and molecular biology of environmental and
biogeochemical processes; computer science and parallel computation for estuary flow
management; applied mathematics and stochastic processes for atmospheric and
hydrologic modeling; and physical and analytical chemistry for understanding
contaminant fate and movement. Results of our investigations along these
complementary lines have been used to support planning and policy making at different
levels of government in the United States and abroad.
Protection of human health as well as ecosystems is much more challenging today than
thirty-one years ago when the EPA was founded. The environmental problems we face
in the United States today are diffuse rather than localized, subtle rather than obvious,
and involve multiple environmental media (air, water, soil/sediment, and biota) rather
than a single medium. Complex environmental questions have biology, chemistry, and
transport as interrelated core components that transcend disciplinary boundaries and
involve multiple temporal and spatial scales. Hence, environmental policies must build
on interconnected technical components. Our structure and culture is one of shared
intellectual challenges and cooperative, interdisciplinary projects with pooled expertise.
In this document we present a forward-looking, broadly cross-disciplinary program
vision. At the core of our vision is an integrative, cross-scale approach, which has been
adopted by study groups at the NSF and the NRC. Those studies stress new
interdisciplinary environmental research directions focusing on human-environment
interactions and greater understanding of biological, physical, and chemical phenomena
below, on, and above the Earth's surface. Our vision also captures the growing number
and interests of Stanford students to understand the functioning of the biosphere and
ecosystems, the stresses human beings place on these systems, and the policy responses
needed to reduce these stresses. We believe the engineering perspective, with its
quantitative approaches and model building, plays a central role in addressing these
issues.
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The Vision of the Environmental and Water Studies Program, March, 2001
Along with human-environment interactions, there are challenging issues related to
environmental resource protection, management, and conservation. In all likelihood,
these issues will dominate our attention in the Twenty-first Century. We envision
positioning our education and research programs to tackle these problems by developing
cross-disciplinary investigative tools that have wide applicability. At the core of our
vision is the crucial need to develop an understanding of the linkages between small-scale
processes and regional and long time-scale phenomena. For example, how do pore-scale
microbiological, chemical, and hydrodynamic processes control and affect aquifer
protection; how does droplet-scale aerosol dynamics control and affect regional air
quality; how does small-scale turbulence over coral reefs control and affect the
functioning of this ecosystem; how do small-scale sediment transport processes and river
restoration efforts control and affect the performance of that ecosystem over decades;
how are micro-scale chemical interactions, such as chemical availability, biological
uptake, and system-level effects affected by contaminants in aquatic ecosystems; and,
how do microbial pathogens and viruses persist in natural and engineered ecosystems?
Developments in remote sensing and internet-based technologies extend the interrelatedness of these scales and provide new ways to formulate alternative environmental
policies, to monitor environmental systems, and to operate treatment processes.
To achieve this vision, and, to develop new opportunities for research and teaching, we
will build on existing faculty strengths and interests, focusing on strengthening
connections between the Environmental Engineering and Science Program and the
Environmental Fluid Mechanics and Hydrology Program, as well as improving bridges to
other groups at Stanford outside the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department.
Necessarily, we will need to sustain our traditional strengths as well as our commitment
to using and developing the most forward-looking technologies in order to remain at the
forefront of our discipline. The rest of this document discusses specific plans for
achieving this vision of our future.
2. What Is Needed to Achieve the Vision
In this section, we ask what would be the composition of an environmental and water
studies program that is optimally designed to tackle the environmental challenges of the
21st century? As discussed in the previous section, the most vexing challenges will
require development of policy or technology for problems involving multiple
environmental compartments, multiple temporal scales (fractions of a second to decades),
and multiple spatial scales (molecular to global). A program designed optimally to
address such problems should contain the expertise needed to collect environmental data;
analyze and interpret data; perform meaningful experiments over a range of spatial
scales; simulate the chemical, biological, and physical processes operative within and
between compartments, over a broad range of spatial and temporal scales; and formulate
and assess environmental policies. This expertise should ideally be located within a
single administrative unit with adjacent offices and shared laboratory facilities to
maximize interactions and facilitate opportunities for collaboration.
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The Vision of the Environmental and Water Studies Program, March, 2001
Clearly, the optimally designed program is a hybrid, containing some expertise
emphasizing specific environmental compartments, some that cuts across compartments,
and some that focuses on tools needed to characterize compartments and processes and to
simulate natural and engineered systems. Expertise focused on specific environmental
compartments would include:
 air - meteorology, climate simulation, aerobiology [e.g., virus transport]; atmospheric
chemistry, photochemistry, indoor air chemistry, combustion chemistry;
 water - aquatic chemistry, fluid mechanics, hydrology, oceanography;
 soil and sediment - soil and sediment chemistry, microbiology, and physics;
 biota - ecotoxicology and macroecology.
Crosscutting expertise would include: expertise in mass transfer, particle dynamics,
environmental organic chemistry, microbial physiology, microbial ecology, subsurface
solute transport, environmental toxicology, limnology, and environmental biotechnology.
Expertise associated with critical tools would include molecular biology, numerical
modeling, analytical chemistry, systems analysis, and geostatistics. Of course,
development and implementation of environmental policy and technology has critical
social, political, and economic dimensions. Thus, an optimally designed science and
engineering program should link to other programs containing such expertise, and it
should also contain faculty with expertise in planning and policy so that those links with
other programs at Stanford can be made effectively.
The chart attached to this document outlines our vision for the Environmental and Water
Studies Program. Shown in the table are areas of expertise, an indication of our current
level of coverage and our desired level of coverage in these areas, and tactics for attaining
our vision for desired level of expertise. This table provides a framework for planning
future appointments and strategic partners within the university. Our goal is to be
excellent in critical core areas, with reliance on expertise in other departments to sustain
adequate coverage in selected disciplines.
3. Foundational Strengths and Intersecting Interests
Environmental and Water Studies at Stanford comprises two complementary programs,
viz., Environmental Engineering and Science, and Environmental Fluid Mechanics and
Hydrology. Each has its own great strengths and strong foci, but we see increasing
collaborations between the two programs as a critical direction for our future. Indeed, in
the medium-term, we seek to enhance collaborations to the point where the existence of
the two units would be perceived solely for administrative purposes. In practice, we
would be functioning as a single, highly integrated Environmental and Water Studies
Program.
Foundational Strengths
Environmental Fluid Mechanics and Hydrology Program: The Environmental Fluid
Mechanics and Hydrology Program is made up of seven tenure line faculty (one of whom
is also director of the Program on Urban Studies) and involves approximately 15 M.S.
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The Vision of the Environmental and Water Studies Program, March, 2001
students, 40 Ph.D. students, including several DOD and NSF fellows, 3 postdocs, and 1
research associate. Total annual research funding is approximately $1.5 million.
Focused on solving challenging environmental problems, the Environmental Fluid
Mechanics and Hydrology Program has five significant core strength areas.
Fundamentals of fluid mechanics and transport
Six faculty members in this program have deep training and experience in the basic
mathematics and physics of fluid motions. Two are deeply involved at the cutting edge
of both surface-water and ground water hydrologic processes; two are expert in the fluid
mechanics of the ocean, estuaries and bays; and two have strengths in atmospheric
processes and motion. The seventh member of our team is a specialist in water resources
and environmental planning.
Expertise in the methods of physical experiments
In the context of the Environmental Fluid Mechanics Laboratory, the group has
developed a worldwide reputation for using state-of-the-art equipment to carry out
sophisticated laboratory and field experimentation. This work has particularly focused on
stratified flows, environmental boundary layers, and on ecologically relevant flow
physics.
Expertise in the methods of numerical experiments [or simulations]
The group is world leading in the area of numerical simulation. Our breadth includes
atmospheric modeling at all scales, from the boundary-layer to global, and sophisticated
stochastic modeling of both fluid motion and chemical transport in the groundwater
regime. We have demonstrated clearly the need for simulation of the environment in
three dimensions and time, and enjoy a world-class reputation for our applications in the
areas of bay/estuary and atmospheric pollution modeling. Our faculty has created
advancements both in numerical algorithms and in the actual models of the physical,
biological, and chemical processes.
Environmental policy analysis
Although we have only one faculty member in this area, he has been able to leverage
activities by working closely with faculty in the School of Humanities and Sciences who
have interests in environmental policy. Our academic program in this area is targeted at
the Ph.D. level and it is concentrated on the implementation of air and water quality
management programs in developing countries.
Knowledge of engineering systems
Although our primary core strengths lie in the areas described above, the program team
has well-known abilities in the assemblage of physical and numerical concepts into
integrated realizations. These can take the form of integration of engineering, political,
and environmental plans and assessments or application, for example, of sophisticated
numerical tools to show the interplay of fluid motions, sediments, and the planned
intrusion of airport runways into San Francisco Bay.
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Collaboration skills
A core strength is our ability to build successful collaborations - on campus, in
California, in the U.S., and around the world. This allows us to be broader, more
influential, and more successful than otherwise possible for an isolated group. Clearly,
we have collaborated on many occasions with our colleagues in EE&S, but we also have
significant links locally to the USGS and to UC Berkeley, as well as to overseas
collaborations with Canada, PR China, Israel, Australia, Spain, Switzerland, and Italy, for
example.
Environmental Engineering and Science Program: The Environmental Engineering
and Science (EES) Program is world-renowned and includes five tenure line faculty, one
teaching faculty, and one research faculty. The program at any point in time typically has
about 30 MS students, 3-4 Engineers Degree students, 30 Ph.D. students, 10 Postdoctoral
Fellows, and 6 Research Associates. The program has an annual research-grantgenerated budget of approximately $3.8 million. The faculty are diverse in areas of
expertise and cumulative experience, providing the basic resource for the fundamental
engineering and science grounding upon which the EES Program has been built.
Collectively, the faculty represents significant core strengths as outlined below.
Fundamentals of biotechnology
The EES Program faculty has a long history of cutting edge work in the area of
environmental biotechnology. For example, long-standing work on anaerobic processes
since the early 1960's has contributed to improved reliability of traditional anaerobic
processes and led the way for development of novel techniques for groundwater cleanup.
Three faculty continue to make fundamental contributions to the basic science
underpinning bioremediation technologies for groundwater contamination. In addition,
two faculty direct pioneering work in novel biofilm processes and biomembrane
technologies.
Fundamentals of microbial processes
Three faculty have rigorous training and extensive experience in the areas important to
understanding microbial processes, including microbial metabolism, biodiversity, and
microbial ecology. Although they have diverse interests, a common theme is the
application of the basic scientific tools to environmental problems. This includes cuttingedge research on the microbiology of biofilms, the evaluation of enzymes and pathways
for the degradation of hazardous organic chemicals, and the molecular biology of
microbial transformations. Work in the emerging area of biogeochemistry and
geomicrobiology explores the interactions of microbes, biofilms, and minerals.
Expertise in fundamentals of physicochemical processes
The program has a worldwide reputation for fundamental work on chemical processes in
engineered and natural environments. The group has expertise in mechanistic aspects of
chemical kinetics of redox reactions (catalysis), thermodynamics of surface reactions, and
gas phase reactions, including aerosols. Cutting edge work continues on fundamental
mechanistic aspects of organic and inorganic contaminant interactions in complex
environments such as soils, sediments, and aquifers. One faculty leads innovative
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The Vision of the Environmental and Water Studies Program, March, 2001
research on the physics and chemistry of aerosols, including bioaerosols. Three faculty
have strength in the area of mass transfer and transport with application to water quality
engineering and management. This emphasis includes research on sorption processes,
interphase mass transfer, and transformation reactions for hazardous chemicals,
especially synthetic or persistent organic chemicals in aquatic systems. We are
recognized for elucidating physicochemical mechanisms important to phase partitioning,
contaminant availability, and abiotic transformation of organic compounds important to
water quality engineering, and soil and sediment quality.
Expertise in field/laboratory interactive investigations
In the early 1970’s the EES Program initiated one of the very first field research projects
on wastewater reclamation and groundwater recharge. The group maintains leadership in
this field by refining the linkages between laboratory investigations and field
experimental observations. These types of complex studies, necessarily interdisciplinary,
require special skill and experience acquired over many projects. A critical element
requisite to being a leader in the field/lab investigation area is the development and
maintenance of a sophisticated, cutting edge analytical facility. The EES Program faculty
has invested heavily in such a facility and its continual maintenance and upgrading.
Interdisciplinary collaborations
The EES Program faculty comprises individuals from widely different scientific and
engineering backgrounds. This has been a tradition since the early 1970's and led early
on to the development of joint collaborative work among the EES faculty, which
continues to this day. The EES faculty has longstanding collaborations with other
scientists and engineers at national laboratories (LBL, LLNL, LANL, ORNL, PNNL,
INEEL), at other academic institutions (e.g., University of Arizona, Oregon State
University), the USGS, and local and regional governmental agencies (e.g., Los Angeles
County Sanitation, Orange County Wastewater), as well as with industrial partners (e.g.,
Ford Motor Co., EFX Systems, Gas Technology Institute, Schlumberger). Additional
collaborations are international (e.g., EWAWG (Switzerland), KAIST (Korea), Mexican
National Institute for Water Technology, Singapore).
Areas of Intersecting Interests
If one examines the core strengths of the two programs, it becomes clear that there are
many overlapping interests. Much of the intersecting interests lie in the transport and
transformation of materials [sediments and aerosols], pollutants, biological species, etc.
The EFM&H group addresses the fundamentals for the fluid motions, while the EES
group addresses chemical and biological processes and rates, and interactions among the
transformed and transported entities. Both groups combine laboratory and field
experimental observations for both engineered and natural systems. Areas of application
include groundwater management and cleanup, contaminant transport and fate, and
ecologically relevant fluid flow and chemical behavior.
4. What Do We Need?
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The Vision of the Environmental and Water Studies Program, March, 2001
Our vision for the academic thrust of the program rests on the following two premises.
First, over the next five years two critical members of our program (Street and Masters)
will be retiring. These two faculty members have contributed greatly to the success of
our student mentoring, undergraduate teaching, and environmental expertise and breadth.
Thus we must consider carefully how to fill the gaps their departures create. Second, in
order to build the kind of program described in our vision we need to strengthen it by
adding additional faculty over the next five to ten years. The six areas in which we
would like to invest replacement and additional billets are described below. In addition,
we outline a plan for strengthening our interactions with other faculty and other programs
at Stanford through courtesy appointments.
We also must meet critical needs for a major investment in upgrading our teaching and
research facilities to take advantage of advances in biological technologies, information
technology, networks, and in the Bio-X program. Given the growth of our laboratory and
field-based research programs, we also need to invest in a sustainable management
structure by hiring laboratory directors and managers.
4.1
Faculty Issues
4.1.1 Embark on a vigorous program of faculty renewal and recruitment
Establishment of a program that is focused on the issues outlined in our vision statement
will bring together individuals that use the tools of biology, chemistry, and physics to
analyze and engineer environmental systems, and to support the formulation and
assessment of environmental policies. The result will be a cohesive and comprehensive
graduate and undergraduate program, with integrated teaching, a more unified front for
recruitment, enhanced communications, an expanded collaborative research environment,
and much improved multi-media capabilities. To implement this program, we propose
hiring faculty in the following six areas:
Position 1. Engineer with expertise in the computation of multi-scale environmental
fluid processes
The Environmental Fluid Mechanics and Hydrology program has redefined the paradigm
for the study of fluids in civil and environmental engineering. This new paradigm has
little to do with traditional civil engineering hydraulics, e.g., the study of pipelines and
open channels, but everything to do with the study of motions in large water bodies and
what they transport in the ground, surface waters, oceans, estuaries, lakes, reservoirs, and
the atmosphere.
Our program requires a person with great strength and depth in the fundamentals of fluid
mechanics and pollution transport and at the same time strength in the processes and tools
of numerical simulation of the motions and transports that define the issues of the day.
Thus, this person must be able at once to advance the state of the art of environmental
fluid mechanics and hydrology and of the numerical tools used to simulate them. Over
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The Vision of the Environmental and Water Studies Program, March, 2001
their career, this person will be expected to contribute widely across the program, e.g., to
problems ranging from river restoration to groundwater pollution transport with chemical
and biological interactions to coastal or river sediment transport to lower atmosphere
winds and pollution transport to internal waves in the coastal ocean and lakes.
Position 2. Environmental scientist with expertise on the fate of organics in aquatic
systems and ecological functioning of natural surface waters
This faculty would be involved in the detection, modeling, and fate of organic chemicals
in natural systems, including uptake and accumulation in aquatic food chains. This
person's background will create an important bridge between the physical transportoriented work of the EFMH group, the environmental organic chemist (position 3), and
the chemical behavior and transformation-oriented research in EES. This faculty member
is critical in order to apply the understanding of microscale processes developed by the
microbiologists and environmental chemists to solving problems of macroscopic
ecosystems and engineered systems. This research activity will provide the
environmental engineer with important modeling tools in problem solving and
engineering understanding of natural ecosystems and quantitative characterization of
ecosystem level effects. The expertise will enable us to tackle complex real-world
ecosystems in studying how contaminants spread, transform, and impact our
environment.
Position 3: Environmental organic chemist
Each year, thousands of new organic molecules are synthesized in industry, and a
significant fraction of those compounds are released into natural ecosystems. For
example, it is increasingly clear that personal care products, including pharmaceuticals
and consumer drugs, are prevalent at low levels in municipal wastewater. Compounds
such as estradiol, derived from birth control pills, are not removed in wastewater
treatment plants and have strong biological affects by functioning as endocrine disrupters.
Furthermore, we lack satisfactory, sensitive analytical techniques to measure and track
important classes of chemicals in the environment, for example, fluorohydrocarbons,
widely used to coat paper cups and in fabric protectors [e.g., the now-discontinued
Scotch-Gard].
In many environmental systems, the rates of abiotic transformation for organic
compounds may be the same order of magnitude or faster than those mediated by
biological processes. This results in delicate, complex transformations and interactions
between the biotic and abiotic worlds. The work of the environmental organic chemist
will provide the scientific understanding of these interactions for persistent, biologicallyactive organic compounds. This knowledge is critical for the engineer when evaluating
new products and green chemistry, as well as for designing successful prevention or
treatment strategies. The contributions of an environmental organic chemist is pivotal to
many research areas in the program, such as microbial transformation rates, abiotic
degradation pathways and mechanisms, transformation product behavior, and ecosystem
effects.
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The Vision of the Environmental and Water Studies Program, March, 2001
A new, junior faculty member in environmental organic chemistry will develop and apply
the most sophisticated analytical tools to identify novel organic chemicals and to
elucidate the chemical transformations and fate of organic molecules in natural and
engineered aqueous systems. A vigorous, innovative research program in environmental
organic chemistry captures Stanford’s focus on the real-world environment, here
addressing chemical interactions and transformations in complex, heterogeneous systems.
Furthermore, the teaching component of a faculty in environmental organic chemistry
will impact Stanford’s undergraduate education beyond the Environmental Engineering
Program (see below). We envision that this faculty member will have a link, in form of a
courtesy appointment, with the Chemistry or Chemical Engineering Department.
Position 4. Environmental scientist with an expertise in limnology, aquatic ecology,
and surface water hydrology and engineering of surface water ecosystems.
This position involves a blend of traditional engineering strengths of quantitative analysis
and problem solving with modern environmental sciences like microbial ecology and
limnology. The faculty member would be an expert in the quantitative characterization of
the ecological functioning of natural surface waters, i.e., translating scientific
understanding of aquatic systems into predictions of system behavior. Problems include
ecological habitat restoration, water supply reliability (harmful algal blooms and others),
fisheries and food, etc. The person’s background would include limnology,
geochemistry, marine biology, fluid mechanics, physical oceanography, and
computational sciences. We envision that this faculty member could also have a courtesy
appointment in the Department of Biological Sciences.
Presently, much of our expertise in limnology and aquatic ecology, phytoplankton
ecology, etc. comes from our interactions with the USGS - people such as Jim Cloern,
Jan Thompson, and Sam Luoma. We should not stake our reputations or activities in this
very important area on our faith that these people and/or the USGS will be continue to be
viable in Menlo Park. Having in-house expertise in these areas is important to building
up our capability of characterizing the physical/biological/fluid mechanical interactions
that occur in fresh-water and near-coastal ocean systems. Such knowledge is critical to
our stated goal of developing relevant predictive tools for such systems.
Position 5. Engineer with an expertise in water resources planning and policy
focusing particularly on issues regarding water supply
Engineering of large-scale water resources systems involves integration of significant
elements of policy and economics with more traditional engineering sciences like fluid
mechanics or aquatic chemistry. Accordingly, recent NSF/EPA RFPs for large programs
on aquatic ecosystems as well as significant parts of the local CalFed Bay-Delta program
have stipulated a policy component to any proposed study. We endorse this approach
and feel it is essential to have an in-house person supplying a policy dimension to the
interdisciplinary studies of ecosystems and hydrologic analyses. Our model for the kind
of person we have in mind is an individual with good technical knowledge of hydrology,
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The Vision of the Environmental and Water Studies Program, March, 2001
hydrological systems, and environmental planning and policy analysis who focuses on
issues that are critical to sustainability. One example would be an individual with
research interests in drought management and mitigation strategies, etc. Other examples
might include studies of policies aimed at balancing agricultural water use with demands
for increased environmental protection. Another example is a person with expertise in
environmental impact assessment and its application to the built, natural, and human
environments.
This person adds an important perspective to our program by extending the technical
expertise of the EWS group and by introducing issues of long-term planning and policy
analysis to the types of societal problems that civil and environmental engineers can help
solve. Such problems require an understanding of both the science and the societal
context of decision-making. Ideally, the individual in this position would be able to
integrate environmental and water resources engineering with economics, organization
theory, policy analysis and planning. Overall, the technically based policy interests of
this person will add an important perspective to the program as it extends the technical
expertise of the EWS group to consider important long term policy planning strategies.
Given their stated focus on environmental issues, this person could have a joint
appointment with the Center for Environmental Science and Policy at the Institute for
International Studies.
Position 6. Engineer with an expertise in sustainable energy technology and policy
At the current time a proposal to hire two new faculty members (incremental billets) in
the School of Engineering is being formulated under the leadership of Gil Masters. The
plan is to engage a number of departments in the school, including Civil and
Environmental, Mechanical, and Electrical Engineering in this endeavor. It is envisaged
that one of these billets would be in Civil and Environmental Engineering with a possible
joint appointment with IIS. If this proposal is successful, the CEE department would
seek a candidate whose research and teaching combines energy-related science and
technology with environmental issues and energy policy. Possible subject areas include
new or improved energy generation technologies, alternative energy systems including
renewables and energy efficiency, distributed energy resources and systems, impacts of
energy systems on the environment—including especially climate change, as well as acid
deposition, urban smog, and indoor air quality—carbon sequestration and carbon trading,
environmental impacts of electric-utility restructuring, transportation systems, and energy
in global economic development.
4.1.2 Offer Strategic Courtesy Appointments
The proposed program will be designed to formalize and expand existing collaborative
relationships of strategic importance. The environmental science and engineering
expertise on campus is poorly integrated. A general view of the program is summarized
in the accompanying table.
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The Vision of the Environmental and Water Studies Program, March, 2001
To further develop the above program, we consider proposing courtesy appointments to
faculty members in other departments with expertise that complements our, e.g.,
Scott Fendorf (Dept of Geological and Environmental Sciences)
– soil and bio/geo/chemistry
Gordon Brown (Dept of Geological and Environmental Sciences)
– geochemistry
Gary Schoolnik (Dept of Medicine, Geographic Medicine & Infectious Disease)
– microbial pathogens in the environment,
Jim Swartz (Dept of Chemical Engineering)
– biotechnology for clean energy production
Rob Dunbar (Dept of Geological and Environmental Sciences)
– oceanography and ocean margins
Pam Matson (Dept of Geological and Environmental Sciences)
– biogeochemical cycling
Integrating expertise from the SoE, SoM, SoES, and SoH&S into the technical program
of Environmental Science and Engineering will generate an important research and
teaching thrust that will place Stanford in a highly visible leadership position for
environmental research.
4.2
Facilities
4.2.1 Create a set of specialty research laboratories targeting critical research areas
Creation of research laboratories will consolidate resources and create new
resources that enable us to provide more attractive undergraduate and graduate lab
offerings. Furthermore, creation of targeted laboratories will allow us to be more
competitive for research funds, especially in emerging and topical research areas. Such
laboratory facilities will greatly enhance our competitiveness in raising research funds
because in writing such proposals we will be able to describe critical core capabilities as
part of a dedicated university facility. These laboratories will concentrate on key research
questions and technologies. The laboratories will not only be equipped with state-of the
art instruments but will also represent an intellectual focal point for ground-breaking
research in the respective areas.
Proposed and existing targeted environmental laboratories:

Stanford Biofilm Research Laboratory Facility [in development] – This Biofilm
facility was recently initiated and is substantially funded by the Bio-X program. The
facility will be available to the Stanford community as a service center and will
facilitate cutting-edge research in microbial biofilms. Microbial biofilms are at the
core of many environmental science and engineering issues and are a particularly
good example for the interconnectedness of environmental research as it integrates
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The Vision of the Environmental and Water Studies Program, March, 2001
molecular microbial processes, ecological interactions, geochemical processes, and
complex hydrodynamics. Director: Spormann

Membrane Research Laboratory [proposed, initiatives underway] — The activities of
this laboratory will center on reverse osmosis technology as well as advanced
membrane technology for separation and water treatment. New materials for
membranes will be explored, as well as new concepts for control of beneficial
biofilms on these membranes will be explored. These research activities form a
naturally link to those in the biofilm research laboratory. Recent collaborative
research activities with the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore have
provided critical momentum and seed funds. Director: Leckie

Environmental Fluid Mechanics Laboratory [existing] — Renovated with Stanford
and NSF funds in 1995, this laboratory is made up of 7 faculty, over 30 Ph.D.
students, and, and in recent months, as many as 6 postdocs. The activities of the lab
fall in several areas. Director: Monismith
(1) Laboratory experiments: The EFML houses what is arguably the best set of
experimental facilities of its kind in the US, including tanks and flumes for stratified,
rotating, wavy, and turbulent boundary layer flows as well as extensive
instrumentation for study of these flows. Boundary layer flows with biological
elements (e.g., coral, clams,..) are of special interest.
(2) Field studies: Complimenting laboratory studies of environmental flows, in the
last 5 years we have developed a substantial field research effort focusing on flows
and mixing in lakes, estuaries and the near-shore coastal ocean including coral reefs
and kelp forests. We were recently awarded a DURIP that will enable us to acquire
an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) that will be used for unmanned
exploration and mapping of lakes, estuaries, and the coastal ocean.
(3) Computation: Supported by the facilities now organized under the PMECC,
computational work in the lab covers a broad range of scales and processes, including
one that are very basic, e.g., mixing produced by a breaking internal wave, to very
applied, e.g., computing modifications of San Francisco Bay circulation by new
runways proposed to be built by filling a part of San Francisco Bay. We also have an
active program in computational atmospheric science that includes studies of smallerscale phenomena like the formation of air pollution in the Bay Area air-shed as well
as of global modifications of the atmosphere by soot. We are active in the
development of advanced numerical tools for all of these classes of flow and the
embedded biology and chemistry.
(4) Hydrological processes: Another focus of the lab is the analysis, simulation, and
prediction of hydrologic processes in the environment and during environmental
remediation. In addition to a longstanding focus on water flow and contaminant
transport in the subsurface, current projects are examining riparian zone restoration,
reservoir sediment management, and ephemeral streamflow and recharge using tools
ranging from stochastic analysis and large-scale numerical simulation to field
experiments.
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The Vision of the Environmental and Water Studies Program, March, 2001

Sediments Research Laboratory [proposed, initiatives underway] — This laboratory
would address the behavior, effects, and management of chemical contaminants in
sediments. The activities would provide cross-disciplinary research for faculty
working on physicochemical processes, environmental organic chemistry, ecological
functioning of natural surface waters, and environmental fluid mechanics. Integrated
research from microscale processes affecting organic compound availability to largerscale processes including food web dynamics would be addressed. The research
reaches to biology and the Hopkins Marine Station on themes linking sediment
chemistry to toxicity and bioaccumulation. A teaching component can be
accommodated at a new Bay facility [see discussion later]. Director: Luthy

Analytical Chemistry Laboratory [existing] — This laboratory has been a strong-hold
for the environmental engineering and science program as it provides critical facilities
and innovative methodologies to identify and detect organic compounds in complex
environmental samples. The initiative in environmental organic chemistry will help
us maintain leadership in this area. Director: Reinhard

The Peter A. McCuen Environmental Computing Center [existing] — The Peter A.
McCuen computer center was established in 2000 with a large gift that enabled us to
purchase a 40 cpu Beowulf cluster parallel-processing supercomputer named
“Baywulf”. In addition to Baywulf, the McCuen center also offers users an aging
Cray J916 mini-supercomputer, a 10 processor Silicon Graphics Origin, and 6 other
SGI workstations. Research carried out in the McCuen center focuses on the
application of advanced numerical methods to the solution of environmental flow
problems. Director: Street
4.2.2 Establish one or more new teaching laboratories in environmental science and
engineering (EES)
One or more laboratories open to both undergraduate and graduate students are
envisioned. These new laboratories would be designed to take advantage of advances in
information technology and networking and would focus on making measurements for
understanding and for engineering analysis, and on the use of the internet for process
monitoring and control.
The present situation is highly inadequate for a program of our stature and ranking. The
environmental engineering and science laboratories are seriously outdated, and we are
twenty years behind peer institutions in terms of some of our facilities. Analytical
measurements are central to understanding and problem solving in environmental
engineering and science. Environmental engineering is highly empirical and
measurement-based. Students need hands-on experiences both in-house and in the field,
and need to be familiar with state-of-the-art analytical instrumentation. Currently, our
undergraduates in the environmental option in CEE do not receive adequate exposure to
environmental measurements. The only current laboratory experiences for most of our
undergraduates are in fluid mechanics and elementary aquatic chemistry.
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The Vision of the Environmental and Water Studies Program, March, 2001
Our students must also be introduced to modern methods of analysis of environmental
samples, including data reduction, precision, and accuracy. More so than ever before, the
volume and complexity of environmental data overwhelms environmental engineers and
scientists. We do have considerable experience in using modern instruments in the
research domain, which should be exploited here. For example, Perry McCarty and Gary
Hopkins pioneered the use of automated sampling and measurement systems, and
telemetry for the evaluation of groundwater remediation. Stephen Monismith currently
makes extensive use of telemetry in his research on natural systems.
Automated measurement systems and telemetry to obtain environmental data will
continue to be a vital aspect of our research program. A teaching laboratory that provides
such exposure will be a valuable training tool for student researchers. Furthermore,
automated measurement systems and telemetry are rapidly moving into engineering
consulting practice. Several consultants have indicated that they are adopting these
strategies in their work, and some are now using the Internet for process monitoring and
control. Future students need to be trained to take advantage of and to advance these
trends. Distributed data acquisition together with remote process monitoring and control
is a critical element for environmental engineering and science.
There is a great opportunity here for us. Modern instrumented and internet-based based
laboratories will enable us to update our labs so that we will be at the leading edge in
teaching. To our knowledge, no other major university has identified this trend and
revamped their teaching laboratories accordingly. We will be the first to develop such
laboratories, providing us with important competitive advantages. We expect that this
change will facilitate our efforts to attract top students. In addition, development of an
internet-based laboratory strategy will be of great value for the teaching of fieldwork that
is a critical component of environmental fluid mechanics, air pollution monitoring, and
the geological sciences. Finally, the proposed laboratory Internet facilities could be
expanded to service other undergraduate classes in our department and around the
university, bringing real-world measurements to the fingertips of students in their dorm
rooms on a regular basis.
4.2.3 Relocate environmental engineering and science teaching laboratories
The EE&S research and teaching laboratories are located in the basement of Terman
Engineering Center and were state of the art when Terman was built in the mid-1970s.
These laboratories are now more than twenty-five years old, outdated for world class
research, and seriously overcrowded. To address this problem, the School of Engineering
and EES raised $3 million for renovation of about half of the current laboratory space.
Renovation of 14,000 sq. ft. began in December 2000. While this renovation is
absolutely critical to maintaining our leading researching programs, much remains to be
done. We need to renovate the remaining research laboratories, and relocate and expand
teaching laboratories.
Space currently available for laboratory-based teaching in the EE&S program barely is
adequate for our old style of instruction. It will not properly accommodate what we
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The Vision of the Environmental and Water Studies Program, March, 2001
envision as appropriate for this teaching lab of the future. Further, it will not allow us to
add basic undergraduate and graduate-level laboratory classes we envision as part of our
new curriculum with faculty having expertise in environmental ecosystem functioning
(position 2) or environmental organic chemistry (position 3). Furthermore, even after the
partial renovation, the available laboratory space in the basement earmarked for research
will not be enough to accommodate the number of post-docs and students we already
have. As a result, spatial overlap of research activities with nearby teaching space will
continue to occur.
If we attempt to better serve the undergraduates by shoehorning teaching and research in
the same space, we will have untrained students sharing hallways and conducting class
exercises in close proximity to research areas containing microbial pathogens, hazardous
chemicals, and radioactive materials. Safety will clearly be improved by teaching in
dedicated facilities rather than within the confines of research laboratories. Experience
has shown that the county safety inspections are problematic when the research and
teaching laboratories are co-mingled, because the entire basement area must be
painstakingly investigated for regulatory violations caused by inexperienced students.
Clearly, separation of teaching and research laboratories would prevent problems with
misuse of equipment, would enhance laboratory safety, and most importantly would
facilitate instruction.
We envision utilizing new space for instructional purposes four quarters of the year. In
the autumn, the internet-based modules would become a new part of the existing
undergraduate Fluid Mechanics Lab; in the winter, the combined undergraduate/graduate
Aquatic Chemistry Lab would meet there regularly; and in the spring, the Treatment
Technology and the Environmental Microbiology Laboratory courses would be held
there. As mentioned above, we anticipate that the to-be-hired faculties in environmental
organic chemistry and aquatic ecology will teach critically needed undergraduate courses
in these teaching lab facilities. The summer quarter would be an ideal time to offer
intensive, Ph.D.-level courses in advanced organic analytical techniques. In no way can
the current teaching facility in the Terman basement accommodate these educational
plans. Additional fume hoods are needed which cannot be installed in the basement costeffectively.
In addition, we anticipate expanded use of teaching laboratories for summer institutes.
Large, multi-investigator grants from the NSF require outreach at the secondary level and
to under-represented groups. We envision that environmental engineering and science
and fluid mechanics provide opportunity for engaging junior/high school students in the
excitement of cross-disciplinary instruction in physics, chemistry, and biology. Thus, in
response to some NSF proposals we propose hosting a summer institute for secondary
school-level science teachers, for which the teaching laboratories would be an important
component providing hands-on learning and the development of environmental teaching
modules for use in junior/high school science classes. Presently we would be pressed to
accommodate this activity in the current laboratories due to overcrowding, safety, and the
mismatch between use for Ph.D. research versus outreach and enrichment for science
teachers.
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The Vision of the Environmental and Water Studies Program, March, 2001
4.2.4 Develop a new field facility on San Francisco Bay for teaching and research
As our field program on estuaries and lakes continues to grow and broaden, in light of
our proposal to add new faculty with interests in surface water ecological processes, it
has become clear that a field facility located on San Francisco Bay, and offering our
faculty and students use of small boats, an area for staging equipment, and wet lab
facilities, would be a valuable asset to our program. Because of its utility to the Ocean
Margins program as well, this facility would be jointly operated with and used by the
School of Earth Sciences. We imagine this facility, ideally located on Stanford’s land on
Redwood Creek next to the Marine Science Institute, and near the USGS Marine Facility
would include a space for preparing and calibrating equipment for field use, a
classroom/seminar room to be used for meetings and for teaching classes, a laboratory
that includes pumped Bay water for work with organisms, as well as storage space for
field equipment. The station would provide several small boats including one larger boat
capable of working in San Francisco Bay or of being put on a trailer, and then driven to
and launched in other water bodies like Lake Tahoe, Clear Lake, Elkhorn Slough near
Monterey, or any of the north coast estuaries. Like the EES teaching labs, we would look
to use these facilities in educational out-reach and enrichment activities including those
offered Stanford alumni by the Alumni Association.
Over the past few years we have held some discussions with Athletic Director, Ted
Leland about building an academic facility in the new boathouse facility to be located on
Redwood Shores. We have not had recent contact with Leland about this proposal but at
the time of our most recent discussions he felt that an academic facility would be an
excellent addition to the planned boathouse. These discussions need to be reactivated.
4.3
Resources
4.3.1 Hires of Research Engineers/Scientists as executive directors of the EFMH and
of the EE&S laboratory, respectively
The Environmental Engineering and Science laboratory is home to over 50 researchers
comprising graduate students, postdocs, research associates, staff, and faculty. Yet, it has
no infrastructure where the laboratory operations are managed on a day-by-day basis.
The EE&S program is in critical need of a laboratory MS or Ph.D.-level manager who
oversees the day-to-day operations, as well as maintains the research equipment.
Since its founding in 1985, the Environmental Fluid Mechanics Laboratory has had an
ever-broadening scope of research. As a consequence our current research and teaching
make use of a large number of computers, as well as a wide variety of sophisticated
laboratory and field instrumentation. It has become clear that the EFML requires a staff
engineer/ scientist to operate at the cutting edge in support of our technology both in
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The Vision of the Environmental and Water Studies Program, March, 2001
classroom and laboratory instruction and in the program's research efforts. We expect
that such a person would have a Ph.D. in an area related to environmental fluid
mechanics,
We envisage that the two such individuals described above would take on the day-to-day
responsibilities of administering the laboratories, especially with respect to the upkeep of
our research instruments and computational tools. We expect that these individuals
would be actively involved and supported by research, and would provide support
teaching in the laboratory courses on an annual basis.
For both positions, the individuals would operate with the title of Executive Director.
4.3.2 Raise funds for prestigious Ph.D. student fellowships in both EE&S and
EFMH
Many programs such as Berkeley and MIT have prestigious, endowed fellowships. They
are very effective as a means of recognizing students for their achievement and for
recruiting highly sought after students. We can honor former faculty members and alumni
by naming the fellowships for them, e.g., The Rolf Eliassen Fellowship in Environmental
Engineering and Science, The Ray K. Linsley Fellowship in Hydrologic Sciences, etc.
4.3.3 Raise endowment for operating the Environmental Engineering and Science,
and Environmental Fluid Mechanics Laboratories
We need a continuing source of funds for a) cost-sharing in the acquisition of major
instruments for general use in the laboratory, b) maintaining our supercomputing
capability in a sustainable way (annual upkeep and maintenance and replacement), and c)
making general purchases that are otherwise disallowed on individual research contracts.
An endowment on the scale of that for an endowed professorship would also provide us
with some of the means of funding the Executive Director positions described above on a
long-term basis.
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The Vision of the Environmental and Water Studies Program, March, 2001
Our vision of EW S
Compartment expertise:
Water
Aquatic chemistry
Fluid mechanics
Hydrology
Oceanography
Water resources planning
Microbiology
Aquatic ecology
TACTICS
Current
level
Desired
level
(5 yrs)
Apptmts
to maintain
Apptmts
to build
Strategic
partnerships
position 3
GES
ME
GES
Geophysics, GES
position 1
position 1
position 5
positions 4,5
Air
Meteorology - field experimental
Climate simulation
Aerobiology
Photochemistry simulation
Photochemistry - experimental
Indoor air quality
Volatile and particulate emissions
Biology
Biology
SJSU
IIS, Biology
position 3
ME
ME
Soil/sediment
Chemistry
position 3
GES
Microbiology
Biology, GES
Physics
GES
Biota
Ecotoxicology
Cross-cutting expertise:
Expertise in mass transfer
Particle dynamics
Environmental organic chemistry
Microbial physiology
Microbial ecology
Subsurface solute transport
Limnology
Environmental biotechnology
Exposure assessment
Energy use/efficiency
Expertise associated with tools:
Molecular biology
Numerical modeling
Analytical chemistry
Environmental planning and policy
Environmental systems analysis
Geostatistics
position 2
Biology
position 3
Chem Eng, ME
ME
Chem
position 4
position 6
position 1
position 3
position 5
position 5
Key to rankings
Excellent
Needs improvement
Nonexistent
Key to positions:
1. Engineer with expertise in advanced computational processes, multi-scale env. fluid
2. Environmental scientist: fate of organics, ecofunctioning of surface waters.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Environmental organic chemist
Environmental scientist: limnology, aquatic ecology, surface water ecosystem engineering
Water resources planning and policy
Sustainable energy technology and policy
Other closely related expertise
combustion chemistry
environmental management
environmental law
environmental policy
Where found?
mechanical engineering
urban studies
law school
center for environmental science and policy, IIS
macroecology
epidemiology
marine biology
energy resources
biological sciences
medical school: epidemiology, health research and policy
biological sciences, Hopkins Marine station
petroleum engineering
18
Biology
GES
USGS
Chem Eng
ME, EE, IIS, Pet. E
Biology, MED
ME, CS
Chem
IIS
GES
Geophysic, G ES