2007-08 Mills Scholarship Recipients
The Texas Water Resources Institute awarded Mills Scholarships in 2007-08 to the Texas A&M University graduate students listed below.
- James Applewhite, Soil & Crop Sciences
- Graduate Advisor: C.T. Hallmark
- Understand how soil physical properties respond to a number of fertility treatments and vegetative mixes (Fort Hood).
- Proposal
- Justin Baker, Agricultural Economics
- Graduate Advisor: Bruce McCarl
- Identify methods for optimizing the spatial and temporal location of agricultural and industrial production of biofuels in order to minimize the economic costs that such practices might have on regional water resources.
- Proposal
- Roberto A. Bazan, Jr., Rangeland Ecology and Management
- Graduate Advisor: Bradford P. Wilcox
- Focus on better understanding runoff generation at the small catchment scale in the Texas Post-Oak savanna. Project is foundation of continuing and long-term monitoring program.
- Proposal
- Stephen Caster, Soil & Crop Sciences
- Graduate Advisor: Terry Gentry, David Zuberer
- Study the effects of urbanization in Texas on water quality, focusing on the soil solution under three types of typical turf grasses, and on the water exiting the drainage system of two sports fields.
- Proposal
- Deepti, Biological & Agricultural Engineering
- Graduate Advisor: R. Karthikeyan
- Apply spatially referenced regression of contaminant transport on watershed attributes for the assessment of pathogen contamination (E.coli) in Guadalupe and San Antonio river basins in Texas.
- Proposal
- René Davina Elms, Chemical Engineering
- Graduate Advisor: M. El-Halwagi
- Focus on designing and optimizing processing facilities for the production of renewable biomass-derived fuels and products in a manner that minimizes water use and discharge
- Proposal
- Dong Suk Han, Civil Engineering
- Graduate Advisor: Bill Batchelor
- Synthesize adsorbent media using nanotechnology and apply them to removal or arsenic, mercury, and selenium from water by investigating adsorptive removal mechanism and stabilization via surface reactions at the solid-water interface.
- Proposal
- Omar Richard Harvey, Geology and Geophysics
- Graduate Advisor: Bruce Herbert
- Evaluate complexation of organic and inorganic wastewater contaminants by polymeric cyclodextrins.
- Proposal
- Kranthi K. Mandadi, Biology
- Graduate Advisor: Thomas D. McKnight
- Focused on improving crop species for their drought tolerance and water use efficiency capabilities, thus alleviating the problems of low or marginal crop production in regions of water deficits.
- Proposal
- Lei Meng, Geography
- Graduate Advisor: Steven Quiring
- The Variable Infiltration Capacity (VIC) model simulated moisture data from 1915 to 2004 will be used to examine the impact of fall, winter and spring soil moistuer anomalies on summer precipitation.
- Proposal
- Sivarajah Mylevaganam, Spatial Sciences Laboratory
- Graduate Advisor: Raghavan Srinivasan
- Develop a generic, spatial-aggregation tool in GIS environment to query and delineate larger basins subsuming smaller ones based on decision makers criteria.
- Proposal
- Suzika Pagán-Riestra, Soil & Crop Sciences
- Graduate Advisor: James Muir
- Evaluate the effect of forage condensed tannins (CT) in feed DM and P disappearance in bovines.
- Proposal
- Tim Pannkuk, Soil & Crop Sciences
- Graduate Advisor: Richard White
- Study reference ET rates to measured ET rates during establishment of turfgrass and woody plants in humid and smi-arid environments.
- Proposal
- Richard E. Rapier, Water Management & Hydrological Sciences
- Graduate Advisor: Ronald Kaiser
- Research goal is to better understand the impacts of take-or-pay water supply contracts on water use in Texas.
- Proposal
- Callie Rogers, Agricultural Economics
- Graduate Advisor: Ed Rister
- Address the financial and economic costs of two of the water supply alternatives available to the Lower Rio Grande Valley: conventional surface-water treatment and desalination of brackish groundwater
- Proposal
- Debabrata Sahoo, Biological & Agricultural Engineering
- Graduate Advisor: Patricia Smith
- Quantify the regional hydrologic budget response (freshwater and urban water demands) to change in LULC in the rangeland ecosystem of the San Antonio River Watershed.
- Proposal
- De'Etra Jenra Young, Ecosystems Science and Management
- Graduate Advisor: Raghavan Srinivasan
- Calculate the percentage of pervious and impervious surfaces in 12 watersheds part of the Brazos River using GIS; investigate the volume and chemistry of runoff on pervious concrete, impervious concrete and control plots to determine the the impact of pervious surfaces on reducing storm runoff and nutrient loss.
- Proposal
