Faculty

Valentina Prigiobbe is assistant professor in the Department of Civil, Environmental, and Ocean Engineering at Stevens Institute of Technology since 2015. Valentina Prigiobbe graduated in Environmental and Territorial Engineering from the University of Rome Tor Vergata. She earned two doctoral degrees, one in Environmental Engineering and one in Mechanical and Process Engineering. During her first Ph.D., she worked on urban hydrology at the University of Rome Tor Vergata and at the Water Research Institute of the National Research Council (IRSA-CNR). While during her second Ph.D., she worked on the mineral carbonation process for CO2 storage at ETH Zurich. She was post-doc and then research associate at The University of Texas at Austin in the Department of Petroleum and Geosystems Engineering. Stevens News.


PhD Students

Brian Caulfield has joined Prigiobbe Group as Ph.D. student in fall 2020. He works on mineral carbonation for carbon utilization in microalgae harvesting for the production of biofuel and bio-plastic. Brian grew up on Long Island and went to Fordham University to study Engineering Physics. After working as a hops farmer in Michigan and then as an energy consultant in NYC, he moved to California to work in Space Operations. Now he works on a project sponsored by DoD on CO2 mineralization for CO2 storage and mining of energy relevant elements.


Undergraduate Students

Mathew Roberts is a senior student and has joined Prigiobbe Group as Pinnacle Scholar in Chemical Engineering since Summer 2022. His research is on the integration of bio-CO2 mineralization with the recovery of energy relevant elements (EREs) for CO2 emission mitigation and mining of elements needed for the deployment of renewable energy technologies. The project is sponsored by DoD.

Evan Papageorge is a undergraduate student in Civil Engineering. He joined Prigiobbe's group in Fall 2022 to work on urban hydrology of Long Island (NY). The aim of the project is to develop a tight coupling between water infrastructure, groundwater, and costal models to better predict flooding. The project is sponsored by USGS.


High-school Students

Skye Taylor is a senior student from Bergen County Technical School with major of aerospace engineering. In Prigiobbe group, she will work on reactive transport modeling of nano- and micro-plastic particles in soil and water.


Alumni

Dong Zhang was a Ph.D. student in Environmental Engineering. He joined the Department of Civil, Environmental and Ocean Engineering at Stevens Institute of Technology in October 2016. He earned a B.S. degree in Environmental Science from Donghua University (Shanghai, China) in 2014, and graduated from Georgia Institute of Technology with a M.S. in Environmental Engineering in 2015. His PhD research focused on the measuring and modeling of the transport of viruses and bacteria in porous media under variable salinity conditions. He graduted on June 24, 2021 and then joined a group at the University of Nebraska as a post-doc to work on transport of microorganisms in porous media.

Qingjian Li was a PhD student in environmental engineering in Prigiobbe Group since Fall 2016 and he graduated on May 10, 2021. He obtianed a Bachelor degree in Petroleum Engineering (2013) and a Master degree in Oil Well Drilling Engineering (2016) from the China University of Petroleum (East China). His research is focused on the fluid flow in porous media and fluid-solid coupling experiments and numerical simulations. His current project is the study of the behavior of nanoparticle-stabilized foam transport in porous media for contaminated site remediation. Currently, he is a research at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and he works on numerical modeling for suburface flow.

Xin Su was a PhD student in civil engineering in Prigiobbe Group since Fall 2016 and she graduated on December 7, 2020. She obtained her bachelor degree from Liaoning Shihua University (China), majoring in water supply and sewerage engineering in 2012. She finished her master study from the University of California Irvine majoring in hydrology and water resource in 2015. Her PhD research was on the interaction between groundwater and infrastruture in urban coastal areas and nuisance flooding due to groundwater emergence. Currently, she is a post-doc at the University of Arkansas working in a groundwater hydrology group.

Ting Liu was a Ph.D. student in Prigiobbe group. He graduated on December 3, 2019. He worked on reactive transport in porous media and urban hydrology focusing on the modeling of sewer networks. Currently, he has been post-doc at Purdue University and has recently joined the School of Sustainable Engineering and the Built Environment at Arizona State University.

Zi Ye was a Ph.D. student in Prigiobbe group. She graduated on August 2, 2019. She worked on reactive transport in porous media and CO2 utilization coupling mineral carbonation with microalgae growth. Currently she is working at Pitingaro & Doetsch Consulting Engineers.


Former Members

Vijay Persaud is an undergraduate student in Chemical Engineering at Stevens. He is working on CO2 mineralization in Dr. Prigiobbe's lab through the Clark Scholar program for Summer 2021. His work is focused on laboratory experiments of Mg-carbonate precipitation.

Louise Gottwald is an undergraduate student, rising Junior majoring in Chemical Engineering at Stevens, and she is from Schnecksville, Pennsylvania. She plans to stay for a fifth year at Stevens to pursue a Master's Degree in Environmental Engineering. She is on the Womens Soccer team at Stevens, and plays center midfield. She is working on CO2 mineralization in Dr. Prigiobbe's lab through the Pinnacle Scholar's program for Summer 2021.

Stephanie Searing is a rising Sophomore majoring in Biomedical Engineering and she is from Long Island, New York. Stephanie is planning to get her Bachelor's and Master's in engineering. In her free time she enjoys playing viola and she is in Stevens Orchestra. She is working on CO2 mineralization in Dr. Prigiobbe's lab through the Pinnacle Scholar's program for Summer 2021.

Haley Kirmaier is an undergraduate student in Chemical Engineering. She is from Queens, New York. Haley is entering her second year (2/5) at Stevens Institute of Technology as part of the Co-Op program. She is working on CO2 mineralization in Dr. Prigiobbe's lab through the Pinnacle Scholar's program for Summer 2021.

Nidhiben Patel was a Master student in Environmental Engineering at Stevens Institute of Technology since August 2018. We worked in Prigiobbe Group in the Urban Groundwater Monitroing project. Now, she works at Rutgers University as a researcher in a project on Wastewater Surveillance for the SARS-CoV-2 virus. She pursued her Master of Science in Biotechnology from Sardar Patel University (Gujarat, India) with the thesis on genotoxic effect of Calotropics on human chromosomes.

Neha Vanjari was an environmental engineering graduate student at Stevens Institute of Technology with an undergraduate degree in Civil Engineering from the University of Mumbai (India) in 2017. She worked in Prigiobbe research group on monitoring the groundwater within the city of Hoboken to study urban flooding together with the PhD student Xin Su.

Risa Okazaki was a undergraduate student in Civil Engineering at Stevens. She visit our group as Pinnacle scholar in summer 2019. She workedin the project of bubble transport in porous media.

Piergiorgio Belvedere was a visiting student from the Department of Civil and Enviromental Engineering at the Politecnico of Turin (Italy) in the academic year 2018-2019. He worked on urban groundwater modeling for low temperature geothermal production. In Prigiobbe Group, he focused on the modeling of the shallow aquifer of Hoboken. He is italian and he likes to cook, watch basket, soccer, and travel.

Lei Yang was a visiting student in Prigiobbe Group from the School of Aerospace Engineering at Tsinghua University in summer 2018. He worked on the modeling and the numerical simulation for nanoparticle-stabilized foam transport in porous media. He is currently a PhD student in Aerospace Engineering at Tsinghua University.

Varun Srinivasan was graduate student in Environmental Engineering at Stevens and in Prigiobbe Group worked on reactive transport in porous media in academic year 2017-2018. Currently he works in eDesign Dynamics in New York City.

Abhishek Patel was graduate student in Civil Engineering at Stevens and in Prigiobbe Group worked on nanoparticle-stabilized foam transport in porous media in academic year 2017-2018.

Mithin Nair was an undergraduate student in Mechanical Engineering at Stevens and in Prigiobbe group worked on 3D printing of porous media chip through the Innovation \& Entrepreneurship Summer Program in summer 2017.

Sarah Chan was an undergraduate student at Stevens and in Prigiobbe Group worked on carbon mineralization for algae growth in summer 2017.

Maryam Beheshti is a PhD candidate at the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) since 2014. She visited Prigiobbe Group during the fall 2017 working in the project on the interaction between groundwawter and water infrastructure.

Jing Cui was an undergraduate student in Geotechnical Engineering. She worked in Prigiobbe group within the project on urban hydrology fall 2016.

Loren Azevedo was a Mechanical Engineering student at Universidade Federal do Espirito Santo in Vitoria (Brazil). She conducted research in our group within the brazilian student exchange program in the summer 2016.

Nidhi Shah is a Civil Engineering student at Stevens Institute of Technology. She conducted research in our group within the Pinnacle scholar program in the summer 2016.