Alexandria Boehm

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Alexandria Boehm
Alma materB.S. California Institute of Technology (1996), M.S., PhD University of California, Irvine (1997, 2000)
EmployerStanford University

Alexandria Boehm is an American scientist whose field of study is civil and environmental engineering. She studies sources, fate and transport of pathogens outside the human body, and coastal water quality. [1] [2] Boehm is a senior fellow at Stanford University's Woods Institute for the Environment and an associate professor in Stanford University's Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. [2] [3]

Contents

Early life and education

Boehm grew up in Oahu, HI. [4] Growing up, she swam, surfed, and snorkeled at the beaches which helped build her admiration for the ocean. [4]

Boehm graduated with honors from California Institute of Technology with a Bachelor's of Science in Engineering and Applied Science in 1996. [5] She earned her Masters of Science from University of California, Irvine in Environmental Engineering in 1997. [5] She went on to earn her PhD from University of California, Irvine in 2000. [5]

Career and research

Boehm is currently a full professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Stanford University. [2] [5] She is also a senior fellow at Stanford University's Woods Institute for the Environment. [2] In 2008, she was a general participant in the National Academy of Engineers' Frontiers of Engineering Symposium. [6] The U.S. Frontiers of Engineering Symposium brings together a group of leaders in engineering to interact and share the technology and advances in their different fields. [7] She was selected as a co-chair panelist for the West Coast Panel for Ocean Acidification and Hypoxia for the states of California, Washington, and the Province of British Columbia and served from 2013 to 2016. [3] [8] This panel gives policy recommendations on ways to lessen the impacts of global climate change in these specific states. [3]

She is interested in pathogens in the environment including their sources, fate, and transport in natural and engineered systems. She studies how pathogens are transmitted to humans through contact with water, feces, and contaminated surfaces. Her research is focused on key problems in both developed and developing countries with the overarching goal of designing and testing novel interventions and technologies for reducing the burden of disease.

She is also interested broadly in coastal water quality where her work addresses the sources, transformation, transport, and ecology of biocolloids - specifically fecal indicator organisms, DNA, pathogens, and phytoplankton - as well as sources and fate of nitrogen. This knowledge is crucial to formulating new management policies and engineering practices that protect human and ecosystem health at the coastal margins.

[2] Boehm is honored in her field for using her research to benefit the health of the ecosystem and the human populations that use these coastal ecosystems [8] [9] Her interdisciplinary research focuses on both human impacts and natural actions. [9] Boehm benefits the health of coastal populations and ecosystems by helping direct policy changes to prevent and restore the water in coastal zones. [9]

Awards and honors

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Environmental engineering</span> Integration of sciences and engineering principles to improve the natural environment for life

Environmental engineering is a professional engineering discipline related to environmental science. It encompasses broad scientific topics like chemistry, biology, ecology, geology, hydraulics, hydrology, microbiology, and mathematics to create solutions that will protect and also improve the health of living organisms and improve the quality of the environment. Environmental engineering is a sub-discipline of civil engineering and chemical engineering. While on the part of civil engineering, the Environmental Engineering is focused mainly on Sanitary Engineering.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Water pollution</span> Contamination of water bodies

Water pollution is the contamination of water bodies, usually as a result of human activities, so that it negatively affects its uses. Water bodies include lakes, rivers, oceans, aquifers, reservoirs and groundwater. Water pollution results when contaminants mix with these water bodies. Contaminants can come from one of four main sources: sewage discharges, industrial activities, agricultural activities, and urban runoff including stormwater. Water pollution is either surface water pollution or groundwater pollution. This form of pollution can lead to many problems, such as the degradation of aquatic ecosystems or spreading water-borne diseases when people use polluted water for drinking or irrigation. Another problem is that water pollution reduces the ecosystem services that the water resource would otherwise provide.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">American Society of Civil Engineers</span> US professional association

The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) is a tax-exempt professional body founded in 1852 to represent members of the civil engineering profession worldwide. Headquartered in Reston, Virginia, it is the oldest national engineering society in the United States. Its constitution was based on the older Boston Society of Civil Engineers from 1848.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hydrobiology</span> Science of life and life processes in water

Hydrobiology is the science of life and life processes in water. Much of modern hydrobiology can be viewed as a sub-discipline of ecology but the sphere of hydrobiology includes taxonomy, economic and industrial biology, morphology, and physiology. The one distinguishing aspect is that all fields relate to aquatic organisms. Most work is related to limnology and can be divided into lotic system ecology and lentic system ecology.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Marine engineering</span> Engineering and design of shipboard systems

Marine engineering is the engineering of boats, ships, submarines, and any other marine vessel. Here it is also taken to include the engineering of other ocean systems and structures – referred to in certain academic and professional circles as “ocean engineering.”

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Marine ecosystem</span> Ecosystem in saltwater environment

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Coastal engineering</span> Branch of civil engineering

Coastal engineering is a branch of civil engineering concerned with the specific demands posed by constructing at or near the coast, as well as the development of the coast itself.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wild fisheries</span> Area containing fish that are harvested commercially

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Nancy Nash Rabalais is an American marine ecologist. Born in Wichita Falls, Texas, she is the daughter of Kathryn Charlotte Preusch and Stephen Anthony Nash, a mechanical engineer, and the second of four children. She researches dead zones in the marine environment and is an expert in eutrophication and nutrient pollution.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Women in climate change</span>

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Christine Shoemaker</span> American environmental engineer

Christine A. Shoemaker joined the Department of Industrial Systems Engineering & Management and the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering as NUS Distinguished Professor on 31 August 2015. Prof Shoemaker obtained her Ph.D. in Mathematics from the University of Southern California supervised by Richard Bellman in Dynamic Programming. Upon her graduation, she joined the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering and later the School of Operations Research and Information Engineering at Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA. She was promoted to full Professor in 1985. From 1985 to 1988, Professor Shoemaker was the Chair of the Department of Environmental Engineering at Cornell University. In 2002 Prof. Shoemaker was appointed the Joseph P. Ripley Professor of Engineering at Cornell University, USA. In 2015, Prof. Shoemaker became Distinguished Professor at National University of Singapore, in both Industrial Systems Engineering and Management Department and Civil and Environmental Engineering Department. While in Singapore she has worked with Singapore water agency to apply her global optimization algorithms to improve the selection of parameters for computationally expensive partial differential equation models for lake hydrodynamics and complex multi-species water quality elements. These results used her group’s new parallel algorithms.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kaveh Madani</span>

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Adina Paytan is a research professor at the Institute of Marine Sciences at the University of California, Santa Cruz. known for research into biogeochemical cycling in the present and the past. She has over 270 scientific publications in journals such as Science, Nature, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and Geophysical Research Letters.

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References

  1. 1 2 Rice, William B. (2010). Water Scientists. Capstone. ISBN   9780756543075.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 University, © Stanford; Stanford; California 94305 (2014-03-10). "Alexandria Boehm - Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering". Welcome to Bio-X. Retrieved 2019-05-05.
  3. 1 2 3 University, © Stanford; Stanford; California 94305 (2016-06-09). "Alexandria Boehm: How we can help save the coastal marine ecosystem". Stanford School of Engineering. Retrieved 2019-05-11.
  4. 1 2 "eGFI – Student Blog » Engineer Spotlight: Alexandria Boehm" . Retrieved 2019-05-05.
  5. 1 2 3 4 "Alexandria Boehm | Stanford Center on Global Poverty and Development". globalpoverty.stanford.edu. Retrieved 2019-05-05.
  6. "Alexandria Boehm". www.naefrontiers.org. Retrieved 2019-05-05.
  7. "Home". www.naefrontiers.org. Retrieved 2019-05-11.
  8. 1 2 3 "The West Coast Ocean Acidification and Hypoxia Science Panel" (PDF).
  9. 1 2 3 4 "Five Eminent Civil Engineers Earn Walter L. Huber Civil Engineering Research Prizes | ASCE News" . Retrieved 2019-05-05.
  10. "NSF Award Search: Award#0641406 - CAREER: Beach Contributions of Pathogen Indicators and Pathogens to Coastal Waters". nsf.gov. Retrieved 2019-05-05.