News
July 7, 2025
RESTORE Directors are moving up! Congratulations to Dr. Clare Robinson on becoming Department Chair (first female ever at Western Engineering) and to Dr. Christopher Power on being promoted to Associate Professor. This definitely warrants celebrations and cake!
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June 25, 2025
Congratulations to RESTORE PhD student Owen Donnelly for being awarded second place in the CEE Winter 2025 Graduate Teaching Assistant Excellence Awards. Owen was a Teaching Assistant for the course Numerical modeling for Environmental Engineers in which our undergraduate students are exposed to groundwater and contaminant transport modeling.
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June 23, 2025
RESTORE extends a warm welcome to Alessandro Suriano who is a visiting PhD student from Politecnico di Torino in Turin, Italy. During his four-month stay with us, Alessandro will work with Dr. Christopher Power on CO2 capture and storage in abandoned underground mine workings.
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June 12, 2025
Big congratulations to RESTORE PhD student Owen Donnelly for winning the International Association of Great Lakes Research 2025 David M. Dolan Scholarship for his research on evaluating the impacts of climate change on arsenic and phosphorus mobilization in coastal aquifers. This is an outstanding achievement!
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June 11, 2025
Congratulations to RESTORE PhD student Grant Hodgins for winning the Geotechnical Research Centre Soderman Award for his outstanding research focused on evaluating the influence of groundwater-surface water interactions on urban stream salinization.
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May 23, 2025
Congratulations to RESTORE MESc student Arielle Santos for winning the Donna Deakin Graduate Award award at Western University. Well deserved achievement.
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May 15, 2025
Congratulations to RESTORE PhD student Madeline Swart for winning several 2025 Western Engineering Graduate Awards including Madiha Salman Memorial Scholarship in Civil and Environmental Engineering, R.M. Quigley Award and J.P. Bickell Foundation Scholarship. Well deserved in recognition of her outstanding leadership and research potential.
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May 13, 2025
RESTORE graduate students present their leading research on urban and coastal groundwater, onsite wastewater treatment systems and emerging contaminants at IAH-CNC annual meeting in Ottawa.
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October 21, 2024
RESTORE co-director Clare Robinson delivers 2024 Farvolden Lecture at University of Waterloo. Fantastic opportunity to share RESTORE’s leading work that highlights the significant impact of groundwater on surface water quality and the sustainability of water resources in Canada.
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May 7, 2021
Congratulations to Deanna Hersey for finishing in 3rd place in the Student Poster Competition at the Canadian Institute of Mining, Metallurgy and Petroleum (CIM) 2021 Convention.
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April 21, 2021
Congratulations to PhD candidate Angelos Almpanis for being awarded the 2020-2021 Ross and Jean Clark Scholarship. Well done Angelos!
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April 4, 2021
RESTORE MESc student Meghan Vissers won second place in the Civil Engineering 3-minute thesis competition
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October 8, 2020
Happy to share our latest research published in the industry-leading magazine: Water Association of Ontario (WEAO)‘s INFLUENT. ‘Smouldering Biosolids and Woodchips: Co-Waste Management’ is on pg. 33 (free). Congrats to great academic-industry team.
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September 9, 2020
Exciting breakthrough in remediating soil and GAC containing PFAS. Alex Duchesne’s paper in ES&T shows that STAR smouldering treatment eliminates PFAS from both with minimal energy input. Substantial PFAS destroyed in the process.
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September 2, 2020
Great work to our prior PhD student (now post-doc) Sabina on publishing a multi-year field study investigating transport of nutrients from septic systems to large lakes.
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August 31, 2020
Check out this new STAR remediation paper led by RESTORE graduate Marco. Novel modelling of STAR under challenging conditions.
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July 22, 2020
4 RESTORE authors part of an international team just published a comprehensive review of smouldering science and engineering applications. Published in the top journal in the field (IF=29).
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May 15, 2020
New paper by RESTORE MESc Rebecca Solinger on a new application of STAR technology to destroy waste oil sludge and to clean contaminated soil. Exciting to see this already being applied at several sites in Canada and worldwide.
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May 15, 2020
Check out new paper by RESTORE MESc Hayley Wallace investigating regional scale groundwater discharge into large lakes.
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May 5, 2020
New paper led by RESTORE MESc student Lauren Oldfield examining septic system effluent inputs to streams by tracking artificial sweeteners
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May 4, 2020
Congratulations to RESTORE student Jiahao Wang on his second place prize in the 11th Annual Geosyntec Student Paper Competition! Great work Jiahao!
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April 30, 2020
RESTORE PhD student Taryn Fournie wins Western 3MT. Looking forward to Ontario 3MT competition.
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April 8th, 2020:
RESTORE Director Clare Robinson awarded a Western Faculty Scholar. She was recognized for her significant achievements in research and teaching. The recipients are considered all-around scholars and will hold the title for two years.
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March 29, 2020
Congratulations to Archana Tamang and Alex Duchesne for both successfully defending their MESc theses this week via remote zoom defenses. Excellent work!!
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March 10, 2020
RESTORE Director Clare Robinson leads successful Canadian Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Scholarships program to develop a partnership between Western and Cuban institutions on natural disaster management.
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February 28, 2020
Congratulations to RESTORE masters student Alex Duchesne and RESTORE collaborator David Patch of RMC for winning best presentation awards at Central Canadian Association of Water Quality Symposium!!
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December 23, 2019
Congratulation to RESTORE student Sabina Rakhimbekova for successfully defending her PhD. Exciting work on groundwater chemical inputs to large lakes. Thanks also to Holly Michael for braving the winter travel to come to Western for the exam.
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December 13, 2019
New RESTORE Prof Christopher Power made a big impact At #AGU2019 with a lightening session as well as a poster focused on integrating geoelectrical and geochemical data for understanding and preventing acid mine drainage at mining sites. Well done Chris!
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November 15, 2019
Congratulations to Jaeleah Goor for recognition of excellence in graduate research with the GRC Quigley Award - RESTORE is very proud
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June 19, 2019
Congratulations to new RESTORE student Patrick Merritt for winning The J.P. Bickell Foundation Mining Scholarship. Patrick is spending the summer in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia doing mine water field work.
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June 17, 2019
Congratulations to James Gale for winning the Gold Medal in Civil Engineering at Western. We look to you joining the RESTORE team in September.
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June 14, 2019
Marco Zanoni presented his talk entitled “STAR Remediation of Contaminated Soil: the Energy Balance that Underpins Applied Smouldering” at the I2T2 2019 Symposium on thermal processes in Banff. Well done Marco and good idea to enjoy the beautiful outdoors while there!
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June 14, 2019
RESTORIAN Cody Murray succesfully defended his Master thesis on field applications of smouldering remediation of waste oil sludge using the STARx Hottpad. Congrats Cody!!
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June 13, 2019
Congratulations to RESTORIAN Ariel Garcia for successfully defending his PhD on sulfidation of nZVI for groundwater remediation. Time to celebrate.
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April 25, 2019
Congratulations to RESTORE MESc students Archana and Jaeleah for winning Environment & Sustainability Awards of Excellence!
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April 22, 2019
RESTORE PhD student Sabina wins Western’s Ideas for Sustainability and Environment Competition. Awesome work!!!
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March 20, 2019
Congratulations to our RESTORE student Lauren Oldfield who did a fantastic job defending her MESc thesis today. Onwards and upwards to a new chapter of work.
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January 16, 2019
Excited to have Dr. Christopher Power join the RESTORE team as a new assistant professor with expertise in environment geophysics and contaminant transport. Dr. Power graduated with a PhD from the group in 2014, before working in mine site closure and reclamation in Nova Scotia, Canada.
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August 29, 2018
Congratulations to Nicholas Head on a successful defense of his Masters thesis examining a Field Test of Electrokinetically-Delivered Thermally Activated Persulfate for Remediation of Chlorinated Solvents in Clay!
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August 29, 2018
Congratulations to Ainsley Inglis on a successful defense of her Masters thesis examining the use of Electrokinetically-Enhanced Emplacement of Lactate in a Chlorinated Solvent Contaminated Clay Site to Promote Bioremediation!
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June 25, 2018
The 2018 STAR Summit was a huge success! Savron employees and STAR researchers, 12 of which were from RESTORE, presented STAR work around the world and the latest discoveries about new applications and improving the process, showing RESTOREs strong industrial-academic link!
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