Academics and Their Research Interests

Water Research: Cross-Disciplinary Opportunities

Meeting to explore shared interests in research into water: October 27th 2006

Academics and their Research Interests

Name / Department / Research Interests /
Professor Paul Bates
Professor of Hydrology / School of Geographical Sciences / My research centers on developing numerical models to better understand a wide range of flow and transport problems in complex, real environments. At present, particular areas of interest include river floodplains, terrestrial catchments and subglacial lake systems. The approach adopted is based on development of numerical Computational Fluid Dynamics, and their parameterization, validation and uncertainty analysis. I am particularly interested in the use of remotely sensed data for model building and analysis.
Professor Tony Davis
Professor of Supramolecular Chemistry / School of Chemistry / Synthetic supramolecular chemistry - synthesis and study of novel molecules with binding, associative, catalytic or other specific properties.
Specific research areas: Synthetic receptors for carbohydrates employing non-covalent interactions. Synthetic receptors for inorganic anions. Enantioselective recognition by steroidal podands. Design/discovery of organic molecular catalysts. Design and synthesis of novel ligands for DNA bases and base-pairs. Synthesis and investigation of novel amphiphiles. The application of combinatorial methodology to problems in supramolecular chemistry.
Professor Richard Evershed
Professor of Biogeochemistry / School of Chemistry / My major water-related interests include: (i) the movement of organic matter in soils in relation to carbon cycling and soil ecosystem processes; (ii) the transport of organic matter from river and lake catchments in relation the potential impacts on the aquatic environment, and (iii) the use of lake sediments as archives of chemical signals of past environments. These are very much new areas of interest which are evolving out of our on-going biogeochemical research.
Dr Alan Feest
Senior Lecturer in Continuing Education / Engineering Management Group / (1) I am the Course Director for the only post graduate course in the University which is centred on water and the issues surrounding water: the MSc Water and Environmental Management. Students for this course come largely from four sources: Water Companies in the UK; the Environment Agency; Consultancies and finally foreign students. The course is a water-related career-centred course of very high quality and good recruitment.
(2) One element of my biodiversity research has led me to collaborate with Wessex Water to investigate whether their RIVPACS data will allow the biodiversity quality of waters to be calculated such that values for assessing "good ecological status" can be established as is required by the Water Framework Directive. If we are successful in this it will have an international impact. I am liaising with UKTAG over this aspect of research.
Dr Mhairi Gibson
Lecturer in Biological Anthropology / Department of Archaeology & Anthropology / The demographic impact of labour-saving development technologies.
I’m interested in the population and health issues in the developing world. Funded by the ESRC & Wellcome Trust, my research has focused on the unforeseen demographic consequences of a labour-saving water supply scheme on a rural agricultural district in Southern Ethiopia. In the absence of family planning, a reduction in women’s water-carrying workloads has increased fertility. Higher birth rates combined with improved child survivorship has resulted in larger family sizes, and increases in childhood malnutrition.
Dr Stephen Gundry
Senior Lecturer in Enterprise & Entrepreneurship / Engineering Management Group / Stephen Gundry is a Senior Lecturer in Engineering Management and is a member of the faculty's Water and Environmental Management Research Centre. His research interests are related to drinking water quality and child health in developing countries, particularly rural areas of Africa. He was coordinator of an EU-funded research project 'AQUAPOL' that looked at the policy implications of contamination of water between source and point of use (see www.bristol.ac.uk/aquapol). This project provided the background for a new project 'AQUATEST' - a preparatory study for a low cost water test for developing countries. This project is again funded by the EU, under the Global Change and Ecosystems theme of Framework 6. Participants include WHO, Oxfam, Universities of Southampton, North Carolina and Cape Town, the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland and several research labs / commercial companies. The principal deliverable, in mid-2007, will be a full proposal to fund the R&D of the test device and associated management systems. More details at: www.aquatest-research.org.
Dr Dawei Han
Lecturer in Civil Engineering / Department of Civil Engineering / Dr. Dawei Han is currently participating in projects investigating weather radar rainfall, flood forecasting, hydroinformatics, and weather ensemble modelling. In the future, I would be interested in applying hydroinformatics in ecohydrology under the human and natural influences.
Dr Andrew Hogg
Senior Lecturer in Applied Mathematics / School of Mathematics / Fluid mechanics, with particular emphasis on two-phase flows ranging from dilute suspensions to granular flows.
Recent projects include: (1) the dynamics of granular avalanches and their interaction with solid obstacles; (2) the density driven intrusion of suspensions of particles through flowing environments; (3) the propagation and arrest of materials with a yield stress; (4) the behaviour of flowing fluidised materials, and (5) the transport of sand by swash on a sloping beach.
Research methods include mathematical modelling and analysis, numerical computation and laboratory experimentation.
Professor Kenneth Ogugua Iwugo
Visiting Fellow/Senior Advisor / Department of Civil Engineering/Water & Environmental Management & International Development / (1) Governance and Capacity Building Issues in the context of the water, sanitation and urban slum upgrading targets (environmental sustainability Goal) of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and the World Bank Poverty Reduction Strategy Processes – PRSP; (2) Sustainable Water Management Systems and Diffuse Pollution Management, and (3) Teaching and Learning Techniques and Development in Water and Environment Education.
Current Areas of Expertise in Advisory and Specialist Consultancy Work: (1) Water Quality and Waste Management; (2) Appropriate Water Supply & Sanitation in Developing Countries; (3) Institutional Development & Capacity Building; (4) Process, Project and Programme Evaluation (with EIA and SEA); (5) Environmental Education & Communication, and (6) Development and Governance Studies.
Mr Steve James
Director of FRPERC / Food Refrigeration & Process Engineering Research Centre / (1) Measurement and prediction of water movement within and from foods during refrigeration, cooking and surface pasteurisation operations. (Especially interested in prediction and control of water activity at surface during rapid heating.); (2) Humidification of retail display cabinets; (3) Reducing ice build up on refrigeration coils; (4) Investigating control of water flow and recirculating/filtering water during scalding and cleaning of pig and poultry carcasses, and (5) Developing rapid E.coli tests for water quality in developing world.
Dr John Loveless
Senior Lecturer in Civil Engineering / Department of Civil Engineering / (1) Reservoir Sedimentation Control - Reservoir sedimentation is a worldwide problem and our research has developed a novel set of hydraulic structures to allow sediment bypassing of dams, and (2) Cutting the cost of coastal structures - We are developing ideas for reducing the cost of construction in the marine environment. Using a new kind of armour unit it should be possible make significant savings to the construction of breakwaters and platforms for the capture of tide, wave, wind and solar energy at the coast and in estuaries.
Dr Katerina Michaelides
Lecturer in Physical Geography / School of Geographical Sciences / (1) Flow pathways and hydrological connectivity in catchments; (2) Rainfall-runoff modelling of catchments, uncertainty relating to spatial patterns using geostatistics approach; (3) Dryland hydrological and geomorphological processes; (4) Soil-erosional processes; experimental work on sediment transport and deposition using chemical tracers; field and experimental work on water- and erosion-driven nutrient dynamics in dryland and temperate-agricultural landscapes, and (5) Manager of TRACE (Test Rig for Advancing Connectivity Experiments) laboratory, which is located in Fenswood Farm, Long Ashton.
Professor Bronwen Morgan
Professor of Socio Legal Studies / School of Law / Current and future research plans: to explore emerging governance patterns around key global public goods such as water, health and education. Do these patterns vary by sector, or are commonalities emerging across sectors such that one could speak of an emerging 'global welfare state'? Given the absence (and undesirability) of global government, to what extent and in what ways is law coordinating the governance of global public goods? What is the relative importance, in different sectors, of complex layers of regulation at multiple levels of governance, of fundamental rights claims which ordinary people make to health, education and water as basic entitlements, and of disputes that cross national borders?
Dr Richard Pancost
Reader in Biogeochemistry / School of Chemistry / My research focuses on biogeochemical cycles in marine environments, ranging from coastal ecosystems to deep sea sediments. These are investigated using a range of molecular-based biomarker and isotopic approaches, allowing microorganisms (including Bacteria, Archaea and microalgae) in different systems to be characterised and their ecology to be elucidated.
Professor Colin Prentice
Professor of Earth System Science / Department of Earth Sciences / (1) As Leader of the Nature QUEST programme, I am promoting research on the vulnerability of human activities to climate change. My own group has developed a methodology to represent probabilistic outcomes from climate and biosphere models. We have shown sharply increasing probabilities of water supply reductions in e.g. southern Africa, China and the eastern USA, and (2) As an ecosystem modeler, I am working on how freshwater runoff is affected by plant physiology changes brought about by changes in CO2 and climate.
Professor Vala Ragnarsdottir
Professor of Environmental Sustainability / Department of Earth Sciences / Vala Ragnarsdottir has a PhD in aqueous geochemistry and over 25 years of experience in working on environmental issues, including fate and transport of pollutants in soil and groundwater. At the moment she has two PhD students that are working on using photocatalytic reactions of mineral surfaces for water purification. More recently she has started working on soil related issues - focusing on the rate of soil formation, soil erosion prevention and the whole life cycle of soils. This she has extended into linking soil geochemistry and health and future work will link the ecologic services of soils with the economic value of natural resources.
Dr Hind Saidani-Scott
Lecturer in Mechanical Engineering / Department of Mechanical Engineering / (1) Non-mechanical refrigeration systems: use of non-mechanical compressors (based on adsorption and use of zeolite + methanol), and (2) Novel Building materials: Until now, have been looking at thermal and hygric properties of traditional building materials. Hope to look at the development of novel materials for construction using recyclable materials.
Future interests: (1) Work done with 3rd year project on water filter’s systems for un-developed countries, and (2) Want to study the development of ‘locally made’ filters by local people at low cost and with very little manufacturing skills or costs, using local knowledge.
Professor David M. Sherman
Professor of Geochemistry / Department of Earth Sciences / We are doing research in aqueous geochemistry and one of our primary focus areas is the understanding of heavy metal/radionuclide pollution in groundwater. Currently, I have three NERC projects related to ground and surface water chemistry: (1) Geochemistry of Arsenic (motivated by the extensive groundwater problem in Bangladesh); (2) Geochemistry of Uranium in Soils (motivated by the use of depleted uranium munitions in recent conflict zones), and (3) Electronic structures of Fe-Mn (hydr)oxides and their aquatic reactivity (understanding photochemical processes/sorption in natural waters).
Our focus is on developing a molecular (atomistic) understanding of geochemical processes, particularly those involving the the sorption of dissolved species by "nanocrystalline" (= colloidal) Fe-Mn (hydr)oxides and clay minerals. This fundamental science could readily be applied to cross-disciplinary projects such as developing new water-treatment technologies that could be used in developing countries and understanding the fate of micronutrients/pollutants in complex aquatic ecosystems.
Professor Peter Smart
Professor of Physical Geography
and
Dr Fiona Whitaker
Senior Lecturer in Earth Sciences / School of Geographical Sciences
Department of Earth Sciences / The focus of our research is on groundwater circulation in carbonate rocks in relation to resource management and carbonate diagenesis. Our approach ranges from direct field observation and instrumentation of groundwater circulation and geochemical processes to numerical modelling of variable density groundwater flow and reaction transport modelling. Recent projects include: (1) Numerical modelling of variable density and temperature groundwater circulation in carbonate platforms in relation to reflux and geothermal drives; (2) Coupled reaction transport modelling of dolomitisation and other diagenetic processes in carbonate platforms; (3) Water tracing using fluorescent dyes to determine direction and rate of groundwater circulation in limestone areas, most recently near Cornelly and Broadfield Down near Bristol; (4) Field investigation of the hydrology and biogeochemistry of density stratified groundwater circulation, Caribbean coast, Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico; (5) Catchment scale modelling of the effects of land use on groundwater quality for springs in the Mendip Hills; (6) Scale effects and aquifer characterisation of carbonate aquifers, and (7) Quarry dewatering, impact assessment, monitoring and mitigation (NERC LINK award and advise to Environment Agency for new advisory document).
Funding sources include oil majors (ExxonMobil, Shell, Connoco Phillips and Chevron), the Environment Agency, UK aggregate companies (Aggregate Industries, Foster Yeoman, Hanson and Tarmac), UK Consulting Companies (ESI, Hydrotechnica, Hyder), Bristol Water and NERC.
Dr James Stuart
Senior Clinical Lecturer in Social Medicine / Department of Social Medicine / My background is as a consultant epidemiologist in infectious disease for the Public Health Laboratory Service and the Health Protection Agency for the last 10 years. I have an honorary contract with the Department of Social Medicine, University of Bristol. My research related to water and infection has involved investigation of outbreaks of water borne disease (swimming pools and other recreational water) and of risk factors, including drinking water, for Giardia and Cryptosporidiium.
Dr Peter Talling
Lecturer in Geology / Department of Earth Sciences / I am interested in flows of sediment and water, and the settling behaviour of cohesive and non-cohesive sediment in water. We have recently conducted a number of simple laboratory experiments to understand both static settling and settling from a shear flow. Most previous work has aimed to understand submarine sediment laden flows, but the work is also relevant for flows in reservoirs.