2008 Student Rresearch

Chad Harrington and Peter Bonventre presented posters at the Union College 2008 Summer Research Poster Session on August 6, 2008.
Below are pictures of their presentations and links to their posters

Chad's Poster	Peter's Poster

Steve Po-Chedley - Steve's senior thesis project is two-fold. First he is using PIXE to investigate the distribution of heavy metals (specifically lead, arsenic and mercury) in tree bark, tree cores, tree leaves and soil samples as a function of the downwind radial distance from a coal power plant located near Buffalo NY. The second project he is working on is the analysis of lead and arsenic contaminant uptake in tree and soil samples used for bioremediation, and these samples are acquired from New Orleans, LA. The trees were planed in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina and will take up heavy metals as part of their life cycle. Tree samples will eventually be taken and analyzed for their heavy metal concentration in order to determine if the bioremediation process is being successful.

At the end of the summer Brandon, Steve and I went out fishing hoping to get some samples of (contaminated) fish to run on the particle accelerator. Here's some of the pictures from the trip on the Mohawk River. Needless to say we are still looking for some fish samples to run.