Post DOcs

Utsav is from Dharan, Nepal, a small country in Asia lined with the eight highest peaks in the world. He completed his Bachelor of Agricultural Engineering from Tribhuwan University in 2011 from Nepal and worked for a consulting company for three years. Utsav worked as a technical officer to design and install renewable technologies in the remote areas of Nepal. He came to the USA in August 2011 as a master's student in Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering at South Dakota State University, SD. As a graduate research student, he worked on a water quality project using effective and low-cost techniques to remove nitrate-N and dissolved phosphorus from the subsurface drainage water. Including using woodchip bioreactors and metal shavings to remove the nutrients loads in the agricultural drainage water. After completing his master's, Utsav joined Ph.D. in civil and Environmental at the University of Nevada Reno in January 2018. Working on removing pharmaceuticals and personal care products from the human urine using waterless urinals sealants. His work included a series of bench-scale experiments followed by sample analysis using HPLC and LC-MS/MS. As a postdoctoral associate in Aga's Lab, Utsav will be looking at the complete degradation of Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFASs) using nanomaterials and microbial communities and analyzing targeted and non-targeted PFASs using liquid chromatography pair with high resolution mass spectrometry (LC-MS). Besides exciting research work, Utsav enjoys cooking, hiking, and watching documentaries.