Beibei Gao, a chemical engineering Ph.D. student in professor Roseanne Ford's lab, was awarded the MDPI Energies Student Poster Award at InterPore2022, the annual conference of the International Society for Porous Media.
Two MDPI Energies awards are given each year at the InterPore conference in recognition of outstanding student poster presentations. This year there were 63 nominations for the award, which includes a prize of 500 euros.
The goal of Gao's research, “Retention of Chemotactic Bacteria in Dual-permeability Microfluidics with Residual NAPL,” centers on understanding how a population of bacteria moves through certain porous materials, such as soil, in response to chemical stimuli signaling a food source.
This food-dependent movement, called chemotaxis, can be harnessed for uses such as removing pollutants from the environment. Gao's research aims to improve the efficiency of bioremediation techniques by better understanding chemotactic behavior.InterPore is a non-profit independent scientific organization established in 2008 to advance and disseminate knowledge for understanding, describing and modeling natural and industrial porous media systems.