{"id":916,"date":"2012-07-18T16:01:11","date_gmt":"2012-07-18T20:01:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/eicdev.fiu.edu\/phparc\/?p=916"},"modified":"2023-01-23T12:19:27","modified_gmt":"2023-01-23T17:19:27","slug":"arcs-graduate-student-research-assistant-successfully-passes-doctoral-dissertation-defense","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eicdev.fiu.edu\/phparc\/feature\/arcs-graduate-student-research-assistant-successfully-passes-doctoral-dissertation-defense\/","title":{"rendered":"ARC\u2019s Graduate Student Research Assistant Successfully Passes Doctoral Dissertation Defense"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Ravi<\/a>

Ravi Gudavalli Successfully Passes Doctoral Dissertation Defense<\/p><\/div>\n

Ravi Gudavalli began his academic journey at FIU as a graduate environmental engineering student in Fall 2003. Ravi was immediately hired by the Applied Research Center (ARC) in 2003 working as a graduate student research assistant. Upon completing his master\u2019s degree in Fall 2005, Ravi worked as a Research Analyst at ARC for a year. In 2007, Ravi joined the civil engineering doctoral program with a major in environmental engineering. His research directly supported the Department of Energy-Florida International University Cooperative Agreement under Project 2 (Rapid Deployment of Engineered Solutions to Hanford Environmental Problems) in support of DOE-EM\u2019s Office of Soil & Groundwater Remediation (EM-12).<\/p>\n

Ravi\u2019s doctoral dissertation, \u201cEffect of pH and Temperature on the Carbonate Promoted Dissolution of Sodium Meta-Autunite,<\/em><\/strong>\u201d is focused on the quantification of the effect of bicarbonate ions on the stability of synthetic Na-autunite created as a result of uranium stabilization through polyphosphate injection at the DOE Hanford Site. Ravi\u2019s investigation determined the rate of Na-autunite dissolution under bicarbonate concentrations ranging from 0.0005 – 0.003 M at pH variations from 6 to 11 and temperature variations from 5 to 60o<\/sup>C.\u00a0 Experiments conducted via single-pass flow-through cells showed that the rate of uranium release from synthetic Na-autunite is directly correlated to the bicarbonate concentration. The bicarbonate ion has a tendency to form soluble complexes with uranium, thus releasing uranium from Na-autunite.<\/p>\n

His research has been supervised by Dr. Yelena Katsenovich and Dr. Leonel Lagos, with oversight and input from Dr. Dawn Wellman at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. The results of his investigation have been presented in the Applied Research Center\u2019s Year End reports prepared for the DOE EM. Dr. Gudavalli has also presented his research at the Waste Management Symposium, and has submitted to the peer-reviewed international journal Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta.<\/p>\n

Ravi\u2019s research makes an important contribution to DOE\u2019s Hanford Site remediation efforts as part of the DOE-EM remediation program. As Dr. Wellman quoted in a recent communication regarding this ARC research effort and Ravi\u2019s dissertation:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe outcome of this study is an important scientific contribution to the understanding of uranium chemistry and autunite dissolution in the presence of bicarbonate ions and can be used for remediation efforts at DOE sites contaminated with uranium.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ravi Gudavalli began his academic journey at FIU as a graduate environmental engineering student in Fall 2003. Ravi was immediately hired by the Applied Research Center (ARC) in 2003 working as a graduate student research assistant. Upon completing his master\u2019s degree in Fall 2005, Ravi worked as a Research Analyst at ARC for a year. In 2007, Ravi joined the civil engineering doctoral program with a major in environmental engineering….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":926,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-916","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-feature","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eicdev.fiu.edu\/phparc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/916","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eicdev.fiu.edu\/phparc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eicdev.fiu.edu\/phparc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eicdev.fiu.edu\/phparc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eicdev.fiu.edu\/phparc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=916"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eicdev.fiu.edu\/phparc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/916\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":54316,"href":"https:\/\/eicdev.fiu.edu\/phparc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/916\/revisions\/54316"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eicdev.fiu.edu\/phparc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/926"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eicdev.fiu.edu\/phparc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=916"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eicdev.fiu.edu\/phparc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=916"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eicdev.fiu.edu\/phparc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=916"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}