I am moving from a full-time research position to being a tenure-track faculty in the Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering at Penn State. In this role, I will be working with Penn State Extension to assess the water quality challenges in Pennsylvania and beyond, and study best management practices to improve our water resources.

Our new paper titled "Nutreint Cycling with Duckweed for the Fertilization of Root, Fruit, Leaf, and Grain Crops: Impacts on Plant-Soil-Leachate Systems" is out in Agriculture (Authors: Fernandez Pulido, C. R; Femeena, P. V.; and Brennan, R. A.). This was part of Fernanadex Pulido's Masters work at Penn State, looking at how applying duckweed as a fertilizer to different crops would impact nutrient leaching, crop uptake, soil fertility, and yield, when compared to conventional synthetic fertilizers.

I finally got my P.E. license (Civil - Water Resources & Environmental) approved through Maryland Board. This has been a long process, so feels awesome!

I was selected as the co-winner of #MyASABEStory one-minute video competition. See the video here! Our review paper on promoting circular bioeconomy using duckweed and microalgae was chosen for the 2023 Superior Paper Award. Had a great time at ASABE this year!

The paper titled "Spatial optimization of nutrient recovery from dairy farms to support economically viable load reductions in the Chesapeake Bay Watershed" has been published in Environmental Challenges (Authors: Femeena, P. V.; Costello, C.; and Brennan, R. A.). This was the first time duckweed application was studied at a watershed-scale.

The paper titled "Maximizing duckweed biomass production for food security at low light intensities: Experimental results and an enhanced predictive model" has been published in Environmental Challenges (Authors: Femeena, P. V.; Roman, B.; and Brennan, R. A.). More experimental findings from this project to be out soon!

The paper titled "Evaluating the Impacts of Environmental and Anthropogenic Factors on Water Quality in the Bumbu River Watershed, Papua New Guinea"  has been published in Water (Authors: Doaemo, W., Betasolo, M., Montenegro, J. F., Pizzigoni, S., Kvashuk, A., Femeena, P. V., and Mohan, M.). This was part of a remote volunteering work for the United Nations.

The proposal titled "A one-stop online platform for water-energy-food (WEF) nexus research: Integrating systems modeling and deep learning-based literature mining" got funded :). The $30,000 project is funded through the Penn State Institutes of Energy and the Environment (IEE) Seed Grant program (PI: Rachel Brennan, Co-PIs: Dr. Lee Giles and Femeena, P. V.). Through this project, we aim to enhance the existing Penn State WEF dashboard and discovery map, offering more resources for the WEF research community.

Effective July 1, 2022, I am starting my new role as Assistant Research Professor for the Center for Climate Solutions and Sustainability Assessment at Penn State. I am very excited to be working on sustainability assessment modeling and life cycle analysis at the water-energy-food nexus. :) 

The poster titled "A spatial optimization framework to identify hotspot counties to implement dairy manure-based duckweed farming for reduced eutrophication in the Chesapeake Bay"  was presented at this year's International Symposium on Sustainable Systems and Technologies which took place at Pittsburgh, PA (Authors: Femeena, P. V., Costello, C., Brennan, R. A.). Thanks to Dr. Chris Costello for presenting it on my behalf. Feel free to access the poster and the recorded pitch.

The review paper titled "Creating a Circular Nitrogen Bioeconomy in Agricultural Systems through Nutrient Recovery and Upcycling by Microalgae and Duckweed: Past Efforts and Future Trends"  has been published in the Journal of the ASABE special collection on Circular Food and Agricultural Systems Collection (Authors: Femeena, P. V., House, G., Brennan, R. A.). 

The technical note titled "Reconceptualizing HRU Threshold Definition in the Soil and Water Assessment Tool"  has been published in the Journal of American Water Resources Association (Authors: Femeena, P. V., Karki, R., Cibin, R., Sudheer, K. P.). Although a minor study, it has been a long-time in the making (we started working on it in the Summer of 2016), so it feels very special!

Finally, the results are in - I passed my PE exam (in Civil Engineering). I appeared for the exam in Oct 2021 for the New Jersey board since Pennsylvania had stricter pre-requisites for the exam. It was a challenging 2 months of preparation, but glad the hard work paid off! If you have questions about preparation, reference materials, etc., feel free to contact me.

The paper titled "Duckweed growth model for large-scale applications: Optimizing harvesting regime and intrinsic growth rate via machine learning to maximize biomass yields"  has been published in Journal of Cleaner Production (Authors: Calicioglu, O., Sengul, M. Y., Femeena, P. V., and Brennan, R. A. ).

The presentation titled "Incorporating harvesting regime into a duckweed growth model to predict optimal biomass production"  was presented virtually during a lightening session at the  American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers Annual International Meeting  2021 (Authors: Calicioglu, O., Sengul, M. Y., Femeena, P. V., and Brennan, R. A.).

The paper titled "Techno-economic Analysis and Life Cycle Assessment of an Integrated Wastewater-Derived Duckweed Biorefinery"  has been published in ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering (Authors: Calicioglu, O., Femeena, P. V., Mutel, C.; Sills, D. L., Richard, T. L., and Brennan, R. A. ).

The presentation titled "Economic and life cycle impacts of creating a circular nitrogen bioeconomy at dairy farms: nutrient recovery and protein-rich feed production by duckweed"  was presented virtually at the International Symposium for Sustainable Systems and Technology 2021 (Authors: Roman, B., Femeena, P. V., and Brennan, R. A).

The paper titled "The Water–Energy–Food Nexus Discovery Map: Linking Geographic Information Systems, Academic Collaboration, and Large-Scale Data Visualization"  has been published in Sustainability (Authors: Arenas, M. A., Femeena, P. V., and Brennan, R. A. ).

The paper titled "Climate change impacts and strategies for adaptation for water resource management in Indiana"  has been published in Climate Change. This is part of a multi-disciplinary project on "Indiana Climate Change Impacts Assessment".