Professor Reid has been an assistant professor at Cornell since 2016. Previously, he was a postdoctoral scientist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL) in Lausanne, Switzerland, where he studied anaerobic biotransformations of arsenic and links between biogeochemical cycling of arsenic in paddy soils and uptake into rice plants. His doctoral research at Princeton University focused on couplings between physiochemical transport and biological cycling of nutrients and trace gases in wetland environments. He has also worked as a high school chemistry teacher with the U.S. Peace Corps in Tanzania and as a laboratory technician in chemical oceanography at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.
CV

Postdocs

Scott Maguffin

Scott comes to us from the University of Oregon where he conducted his PhD research on biogeochemical reactions in natural water systems.  He investigated arsenic cycling and organic arsenic production in a naturally contaminated aquifer. Scott was awarded a National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Research Fellowship and is excited to continue his arsenic research as part of the Reid research group at Cornell University.  Scott also is very interested in his community, science, and environmental policy and has worked to further the incorporation of empiricism in local and federal legislation. At the local level, he has volunteered for science education non-profits, the VA, and public schools.  Scott loved living in the Pacific Northwest but is happy to be coming back to his home state of New York. He enjoys an active lifestyle, particularly basketball and soccer as well as spending time outdoors hiking, traveling, and camping.

 

Graduate Students

Lena Abu-Ali

Lena hails from the Midwest, where she completed a Bachelor’s Degree in Environmental & Ecological Engineering at Purdue University. Lena’s undergraduate research focused on both the sorption of emerging contaminants to soils and the desorption of micropollutants from commercially-available biosolids. Her current research interests include soil biogeochemistry and microbially-mediated nutrient cycling in urban and agricultural settings. She began working on arsenic pore water geochemistry in rice paddy soils in the spring of 2018. In her free time, you can find Lena hiking or kayaking around upstate New York, playing video games, or watching Major League Baseball.

 

Philip McGuire

Phil grew up in Delaware and attended the University of Delaware, where he obtained a B.S. in Environmental Engineering in 2016. While at UD, he worked in a wastewater treatment laboratory where he investigated several topics including the extraction of polyhydroxyalkanoates from microbes and nitrate removal by engineered rapid infiltration basins. His current research seeks to obtain a better understanding of the evolution of gases – particularly nitrous oxide – from the aqueous phase to the gaseous phase in the subsurface.   In his spare time, he enjoys exploring the outdoors and sites around Ithaca as well as watching movies.

 

Simiao Wang

Simiao Wang is a graduate student from China and has been a student in the Environmental Processes area at Cornell University since 2017.  Simiao obtained his Bachelor of Environment and Sustainable Development in 2017 in the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. While he was in PolyU, he took part in several research projects focusing on atmospheric pollution.   At Cornell, he began research investigating the effects of wetland plant roots on nitrous oxide emission from constructed wetland systems.  Simiao enjoys reading and video games in his spare time but he would also like to visit places of interest around the world.

 

 

 

 

 

Undergraduates

Lily Falk

Lily is a junior at Cornell studying Environmental Engineering.  Lily works with Phil to complement his project on nitrous oxide cycling, and has recently worked to develop protocols to extract protein and nucleic acids from woodchip-attached biofilms. In the spring of 2017 Lily built a planar optode for the lab to measure dissolved oxygen concentrations. Lily is interested in using engineered systems to create a sustainable future on earth.

 

Jenna Israel

 

Jenna is a rising sophomore at Cornell studying environmental engineering. Jenna works with Simiao Wang to examine the role of roots in nitrous oxide emissions from constructed wetlands. She is also working with Phil McGuire and the Ecohydrology Group to inspect flow patterns and denitrification capabilities of a woodchip bioreactor at the Homer C. Thompson Research Vegetable Farm. Jenna is curious to learn more about biological and low energy remediation techniques to address pollution and climate change.

Jessica Olsen

 

Jessica is a rising sophomore studying civil engineering with an environmental focus. Her past research assessed the viability of recycled concrete in the future of sustainable construction. Now at Cornell, she is a Presidential Research Scholar with an acute interest in environmental remediation through engineered methods. Her current work, under the mentorship of Scott Maguffin, investigates the temporal accumulation of arsenic species in the biomass of rice exposed to varying irrigation and pesticide treatments from the USDA’s Dale Bumpers National Rice Research Center in Stuttgart, AR. Jessica’s future work will include similar analyses on rice samples from Vietnam, thereby characterizing Southeast Asian agricultural impacts, and a shift of focus to determine the chemical composition of the rice soil