As part of our group's collaboration with San Bernadino Valley College, we hosted a group of 50 students from San Bernadino Valley College to visit our lab. Gongde, Tushar, Sam and Michelle did an excellent work in explaining their research projects to the students. This outreach activity is part of our USDS-funded project to bring more underrepresented community college students to 4-year universities. 

Undergraduate students from our group, Lupe Lara and Adrianne Barton gave poster presentations at the UCR Undergraduate Summer Research Symposium. Lupe and Adrianne are undergraduate researchers in our group this summer. Lupe is from La Verne University and Adrianne is from Mississippi State University. This summer undergraduate research is part of our group's two ongoing projects to bring research opportunities to a broader student community.

Our group participated in the annual Orange Country Water District Open House. Lucy and Sam designed and showed water reuse demonstrations to more than 300 K-12 school students. Well done!

Undergraduate students from our group, Heidi Li and Ruben Orozco gave poster presentations at the UCR Undergraduate Summer Research Symposium. Heidi presented her work on toxicity of oxidation byproducts during groundwater remediation treatment, and Ruben presented his work on halide radical chemistry relevant to water reuse. Both students worked under the supervision of PhD student Lucy. Well done!

Our group visited Norco College (a Riverside community college) and met with the undergraduate students there. Michelle and Lucy shared their graduate school experience and discussed water quality issues. The Norco students were very engaged in the discussion. Many thanks to our outreach collaborator, Dr. Dr. Siobhan Freitas in the Department of Chemistry at Norco!

   Our group discussed graduate research and graduate school to inspired minds at Norco College!

Our group attended the American Water Works Association California-Nevada Sectional Conference in Anaheim, CA. Lucy Li presented her research on oxidative groundwater remediation, Dawit Wordofa presented his work on sulfate radical disinfection and Lamees Alkhamis presented her work on chromium treatment. Lamees and Lucy won the Second and Third Place in Young Professional Poster Competition, respectively. Congratulations! 

Our group attended the UCR College of Engineering undergraduate research fair organized by AlChE student chapter. We displayed water treatment units and modules. Many undergraduate student were interested and discussed research opportunities with our graduate students. It's nice to see so many motivated souls! 

  Lucy and Han are demonstrating the water treatment unit to interested undergraduate students.

Our group member and first-year graduate student Lucy Li attended the annual UCR Water IGERT Retreat at UCR Palm Desert campus. It was a great two-day event to interact with other first-year IGERT fellow. Dr. Liu also attended the event and discussed program plans with other faculty members. Everyone enjoyed the professional and the social part of the event. Water IGERT program at UCR is intended to produce scholars who will be able to work in leadership positions in government, private, and nonprofit organizations interested in improving community health and child development outcomes via improved water supply, utilization, and management. If you are interested in it, please don't hesitate to contact Dr. Liu.

We had a great summer with lots of fun in the lab! Our weekly group meeting and discussion generated plenty of food to think. Pictures below recaptured some of the moments. Go Highlanders!

We hosted a group of 15 undergraduate students from Tohuku University for 3-day lab work in our group. Everyone had great fun in working with the Japanese students and interacted with them in the lab and during lunch time. The Tohuku students learned a lot about water quality and treatment by participating in our interactive research projects.

Tohuku students learning lab techniques with members of Liu Research Group.

Diana did a fantastic poster presentation and got recognized at the Annual UCR Undergraduate Research Symposium organized by the Mentoring Summer Research Internship Program. Diana's summer research focused on the formation of hexavalent chromium in chlorinated water, a process that can lead to reoccurrence of toxic chromium in drinking water. Diana will continue working on this project throughout the next school year and we are all happy to her around!