UW Doctoral Candidate Among Eight National Scholarship Recipients

University of Wyoming Ph.D. candidate Judd Larson is among eight national recipients of the Environmental Research and Education Foundation (EREF) scholarship.

He won the award for his project, titled “Stimulating Autoinduction of Biofilm Growth to Enhance Cellulose Stabilization.”

The EREF scholarship program recognizes students with academic excellence, professional involvement and an interest in solid waste management issues at the doctoral and master’s levels. Doctoral/postdoctoral scholarships are given in memory of Francois Fiessinger, a founding director of the foundation.

Larson, from Bradenton, Fla., earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Florida in environmental engineering sciences. For his master’s thesis, he worked with a 48-acre bioreactor landfill as his laboratory to study the pressure-flow relationships of different horizontal injection line designs.

Larson then moved to Columbus, Ohio, to work at CDM (now CDM-Smith) on a variety of civil and environmental projects, including solid and hazardous waste design and engineering; stormwater quality analysis and hydraulic modeling; sanitary sewer inflow and infiltration; wastewater treatment plant design and engineering; water treatment plant design and engineering; potable water pipeline design and construction; trenchless technologies, air quality analysis, groundwater remediation and environmental life-cycle analyses.

The seven other EREF scholarship recipients come from the following schools: Clemson University, Clemson, S.C.; Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Ga.; Green Mountain College, Poultney, Vt.; Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia; SUNY Stony Brook, Stony Brook, N.Y.; University of Texas at Austin; and Yale University, New Haven, Conn.