Jennifer Jay’s research integrates field and laboratory approaches to better understand the geochemical and microbial processes that govern the fate of contaminants in the environment. Specific interests include the geochemical and microbial methylation of mercury by sulfate-reducing bacteria (the end-product of this reaction, methylmercury, is a potent neurotoxin with a very strong tendency to bioaccumulate), the mobilization of arsenic in groundwater, and the persistence of fecal indicator bacteria and pathogens in beach sediment. Understanding the cycling of contaminants in aquatic systems allows us to better assess and minimize hazards associated with environmental contamination, and to more accurately predict effects of environmental perturbations.

Jay earned her B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. in Civil and Environmental Engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.  She is a Professor in the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department at the University of California Los Angeles, with an appointment in the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability.  She specializes in the fate and transport of chemical and microbial contaminants in the environment.  Her research addresses a wide range of topics  including coastal water quality, heavy metals in the environment, environmental proliferation of antibiotic resistance, and the impacts of environmental education on the carbon footprint of dietary choices. She teaches classes in Aquatic Chemistry, Statistics, Chemical Fate and Transport, and Food: A Lens for Environment and Sustainability.  She was awarded the Presidential Early Career Award in Science and Engineering, and two engineering school-wide awards for excellence in teaching.  In addition, she was the Pritzker Fellow for Environmental Sustainability and a Carnegie Fellow for Civic Engagement in Higher Education.  Jennifer also directs the Center for Environmental Research and Community Engagement (CERCE), a UCLA Center that addresses community-based environmental research questions in under-served communities in Los Angeles.

Education

B.S., (1991), Massachusetts Institute of Technology
M.S., (1993), Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Ph.D., (1999), Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Lab: https://jaylabucla.org/

Publications: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=lltsCswAAAAJ&hl=en

Timothy S. Fisher (PhD 1998, Cornell) was born in Aurora, IL USA. He joined UCLA’s Department of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering in 2017 after spending 15 years at Purdue’s School of Mechanical Engineering, and several years previously at Vanderbilt University. He is the founding Director of the Center for Integrated Thermal Management of Aerospace Vehicles, supported by the US Air Force Research Laboratory and leading industrial members: Boeing, Honeywell, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and Rolls-Royce. He is an Adjunct Professor in the International Centre for Materials Science at the Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research (JNCASR) and he co-directs the Joint Centre on Nanomaterials for Clean Energy and Environmental Sensors. From 2009 to 2012, he served as a Research Scientist at the Air Force Research Laboratory’s newly formed Thermal Sciences and Materials Branch of the Materials and Manufacturing Directorate. In 2013 he became the James G. Dwyer Professor in Mechanical Engineering at Purdue, and in the same year he founded a start-up company to commercialize inventions from his laboratory. Prior to his graduate studies, he was employed from 1991 to 1993 as a design engineer in Motorola’s Automotive and Industrial Electronics Group. His research has included studies of nanoscale heat transfer, carbon nanomaterial synthesis, coupled electro-thermal effects in semiconductor and electron emission devices, energy conversion and storage materials and devices, microfluidic devices, biosensing, and related computational methods ranging from atomistic to continuum scales. (Google Scholar, Linkedin) [tsfisher@g.ucla.edu]