March 20, 2023
Whether you’re local or global, student or alumni, the Abstract’s weekly news digest will help you stay in the loop with our amazing Gillings School community.
Manga wins 2023 Global Engineering Award from CU Boulder
Drs. Emily Bedell and Musa Manga pose with their Global Engineering Awards.
Congratulations to Musa Manga, PhD, assistant professor of environmental sciences and engineering, who has been named a 2023 recipient of the Global Engineering Awards from the Mortenson Center at the University of Colorado (CU) Boulder.
On March 10, 2023, the Mortenson Center hosted its 5th Annual Global Engineering & Resilience Awards, recognizing professionals and students whose work aligns with the Mortenson Center’s mission and vision. These awards seek to highlight the work of individuals who contribute to the field of global engineering. This encompasses not only those students and professionals in traditional engineering disciplines, with a focus on positive impact in low- and middle-income countries, but also those who are in related disciplines that take a solutions-oriented approach to the same challenges – water, sanitation, energy, food, shelter and infrastructure. These related disciplines include global health, environmental science, atmospheric science, agricultural science, geography, governance, policy and community advocacy.
Manga is a member of the Water Institute at UNC with more than ten years’ experience in water and sanitation. He uses environmental engineering and microbiology tools to identify low-cost, scalable, and sustainable interventions to interrupt the transmission of excreta-related diseases to protect public health and wellbeing. Manga’s broad research interests are in planning, monitoring and improvement of water, sanitation and fecal sludge management practices to promote: i) equity for underserved communities in both developing and developed countries; ii) development and validation of pathogen hazards and risk models; iii) environmental justice and climate change mitigation; and iv) optimization of sanitation technologies/wastewater treatment and BioResource Recovery (Nutrient and BioEnergy).
Learn more about the award winners.
Gillings alumna informs Congress about tick-borne disease
Dr. Jennifer Platt
Jennifer Platt, MPH ’94 (environmental sciences and engineering), DrPH ’94 (public health leadership), is a Gillings alum who is working to inform legislators about issues related to tick-borne disease – an area of increasing importance across the region and one multiple UNC Gillings researchers are contributing to.
She serves on the Tick-Borne Conditions Working Group at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which released its third report to Congress in 2022.
