A team of students representing Carleton and the local Air-Water Waste Management Chapter, placed fourth in a North America-wide student competition at the AWMA conference in Calgary, Alberta, receiving a $2000 prize. They were the second-best Canadian team. Their challenge was to devise a strategy to minimize environmental impacts of the oil sands industry, and communicate this in a poster and oral presentation, competing against 9 other teams. The title of their poster and presentation was "Waterless Bitumen Extraction using Hexane".
The team was a mixture of graduate and undergraduate students from Carleton University, selected in a run-off competition by the local chapter of AWMA. The team was Luz Puentes Jacome, Matthew Russell, Ravindren Krishnasamy, and Michelle Chiasson. Financial support was provided by the local AWMA chapter and the local student organization SEEDS.
Funding was provided by Carleton University from the offices of the Vice-Presidents Academic and Research.
2008 Bhagya Weerasinghe, an M.A.Sc. student in the Environmental Engineering program, presented her research "Investigation of Dechlorination Kinetics of Selected Dechlorination Chemicals" recently at the annual Water Environment Association of Ontario conference. Bhagya was awarded Best Student Presenter. Bhagya Weerasinghe is supervised by Professor Onita Basu.