Published: April 15, 2014

Two CU-Boulder graduate students took home 2013 Outstanding Student Paper Awards in hydrology at the American Geophysical Union’s Fall Meeting in December 2013. Held annually in San Francisco, the AGU Fall Meeting is the largest worldwide conference in the geophysical sciences, attracting more than 22,000 Earth and space scientists, educators, students, and other leaders. Cameron Bracken, who works with civil engineering professor and CIRES fellow Rajagopalan Balaji, won for his paper and oral presentation on “Variability of Hydroclimate Extremes on Seasonal to Multidecadal Time Scales in the Western U.S.” Bracken’s research is focused on stochastic streamflow and implications to water resources management, and he is set to complete his doctoral work in 2015 or 2016. Masoud Arshadi, who works with civil engineering professor Harihar Rajaram, won for his paper and poster presentation on “High-Resolution Experiments on chemical oxidation of DNAPL in variable-aperture fractures: Delineation of three time regimes.” “That means two of the 16 awardees from more than 500 student presenters at the AGU Fall Meeting were from our department,” Rajaram pointed out. Arshadi is also distinguishing himself as a graduate student here at CU-Boulder. In addition to receiving a CEAE department award for his outstanding TA work in CVEN 3111, Ashradi received a Graduate School Dissertation Completion Fellowship to assist in the completion of his doctoral dissertation. Awarded by the Graduate School, the award insures full support for one academic semester, including a monthly stipend, in order to allow students the resources necessary to devote their full attention to dissertation writing. He is set to complete his thesis on evaluation of permanganate oxidation to remediate carcinogenic chemicals in groundwater in 2014 or early 2015.