Biographical note

Dr. Cristiane (Cris) J. Q. Surbeck is a licensed Professional Engineer, Associate Dean, and faculty member of the School of Engineering at the University of Mississippi. She has worked in academia and environmental consulting. In the early part of her career in environmental consulting, her work included investigation, feasibility studies, design, construction, monitoring, and operation and maintenance of cleanup operations of soil and groundwater at contaminated sites; environmental due diligence assessment for manufacturing facilities; and stormwater monitoring programs, with projects throughout the U.S., Brazil, and Mexico. At UM, she teaches environmental and water resources engineering courses. Her research topics have ranged from microbial pollutant transport in water bodies, statistical methods for predicting pollutant occurrence, modeling of stormwater quantity and quality using green infrastructure, and infrastructure sustainability. She led the university’s chapter of Engineers Without Borders on three trips to work on construction and well drilling projects in a rural village in Togo, West Africa. In 2015, she was elected to the Governing Board of the American Society of Civil Engineers’ Environmental and Water Resources Institute (ASCE-EWRI) and served as its President from 2017 to 2018. She received a B.S. degree in civil engineering from the University of Maryland, and an M.S. and Ph.D. in environmental engineering from the University of California, Irvine. Dr. Jeff (Jih-Fen) Kuo worked in environmental engineering industries for over ten years before joining the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at California State University, Fullerton, in 1995. Areas of research in environmental engineering include dechlorination of halogenated aromatics by ultrasound, fines/bacteria migration through porous media, biodegradability of heavy hydrocarbons, surface properties of composite mineral oxides, kinetics of activated carbon adsorption, wastewater filtration, THM formation potential of ion exchange resins, UV disinfection, sequential chlorination, nitrification/denitrification, removal of target compounds using nanoparticles, persulfate oxidation of persistent chemicals, microwave oxidation for wastewater treatment, landfill gas recovery and utilization, greenhouse gases control technologies, fugitive methane emissions from the gas industry, and stormwater runoff treatment. He received a B.S. degree in chemical engineering from National Taiwan University, an M.S. in chemical engineering from the University of Wyoming, an M.S. in petroleum engineering, and an M.S. and a Ph.D. in environmental engineering from the University of Southern California. He is a professional civil, mechanical, and chemical engineer registered in California.