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Iacopo Aiolfi
Master de Biogéosciences |
Iacopo was born and raised in Ticino (CH). In 2008 he moved to Lausanne to pursue his studies in environmental sciences. In 2011, he obtained a Bachelor in environmental sciences, specialized in human environment. Interested in a scientific approach to environmental issues, Iacopo decided to undertake the Masters in Biogeosciences with a focus in Geomicrobiology. His Master’s work was involved the study of heavy metals dynamics in river environments.
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Luc Dolivo
Master de Biogéosciences |
Luc was born in Westerbork (NL) and traveled with his family all over the world until he was fourteen. Always attracted by science, he completed a Bachelor degree in biology at the University of Lausanne. His interest inthe relation between the organic and the inorganic led him to a Master degree in Biogeosciences. His work involved investigating the causes of precipitation of iron oxides in an affluent of the Boiron river near Morges (Canton Vaud, Switzerland).
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Samuele Ferracin
Undergraduate Student |
Samuele is an italian student. He has just finished the second year of physics, and has spent here the last summer creating this website, hel- ping us ordering supplings for the lab and remembering some statisti- cal topics and sempling the Venoge with Jacopo. This year he has up- dated the website. During his free time he uses to run and to play ukulele.
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Boris Droz
Master de Biogéosciences |
Boris comes from La Chaux-de-Fonds (CH). He is a chemical engineer with experience in waste water treatment research, specifically disinfection and removal of organic persistent pollutants. He has started to study soil science (Masters in Biogeosciences) to better understand how chemicals behave in the environment. Boris wants to link biological and chemical perspectives in future research projects. During his free time, he enjoys bird watching, traveling by bike, and eating cheese.
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Amanda Finger
Master in Environmental Geoscience |
Amanda was raised in Bern (CH). She obtained her BSc in Geography, specializing in physical geography, in 2012 at the University of Bern. She wanted to focus on geochemistry and connected environmental is- sues. This interest along with the desire to study in a multilingual environment led her to the Master in Environmental Sciences at the University of Lausanne. Her Masters thesis was aimed at evaluating the toxicity of arsenic-rich iron-oxide sludge produced during iron elec- trocoagulation, a novel arsenic-removal technique.
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Armelle DuPasquier
Master in Environmental Geoscience |
Armelle is from Neuchâtel. She obtained her Bsc in Earth and Environ- mental Sciences, option Environmental Sciences at the University of Geneva in 2013 . She then decided to have a more multi-disciplinary approach and to do so, started the Master in Biogeosciences jointly offered by the University of Lausanne and the University of Neuchâtel. Her Master project focused on the mineralogy and the biogeochemistry of travertines from Skoura, Morroco.
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Naomi Dumas
PhD Candidate |
Naomi comes from St Etienne (France). In 2012 she finished her masters in Microbiology at the University of Lyon with a thesis project on the bioremediation of chlorinated solvents. Naomi is interested in the use of bacteria for environmental remediation. For her PhD project, she worked on the influence of microbial surfaces and EPS on metal sorption in biogenic birnessite.
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Anna Simanova
Premiér Assistant |
Anna completed her PhD in the Department of Chemistry at Umea Univer- sity (Sweden) in 2011 and joined our lab in May 2012. She is interes- ted in understanding interfacial processes at mineral surfaces in the presence of environmentally relevant organic and inorganic ions of both natural and anthropogenic origins. For her PhD research project, she investigated the reactions between the iron (hydr)oxide mineral, goethite, and common soil organic ligands such as oxalate and desfer- rioxamine-B by means of wet chemical and spectroscopic methods. In our lab she is focusing on the reactivity of different manganese oxides, including biogenic birnessite, towards trace metal sorption. She uses a combination of wet chemistry methods and X-ray absorption spectros- copy (XAS) to characterize the mechanisms of interaction at the mine- ral interface. CV
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Case M. Van Genuchten
Premier Assistant |
Case van Genuchten earned a Ph.D. in the department of Civil and Environmental Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley (USA) in December, 2013. Case’s research interests lie at the interface of environmental geochemistry and environmental engineering. He is passionate about studying nature’s way of removing contaminants and exploiting this knowledge to develop low-cost and efficient engineered water treatment technologies for use in both rural communities developing countries and in centralized water treatment. His current projects involve applying advanced synchrotron-based techniques to characterize the bonding environments of inorganic contaminants such As, Sb, Pb, and Cd to naturally occurring or electrochemically generated metal oxides. Case is also interested in the fate of persistent organic pollutants in drinking water treatment.
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Julia Gonzalez Holguera
Institut of Earth Surface Dynamics |
Julia obtained an MSci in chemistry from Imperial College (UK). She came to Lausanne as an exchange student to complete her master’s pro- ject at the EPFL, looking at photochemical processes in dye sensitized solar cells. Julia took advantage of the close proximity of the UNIL to follow courses in Environmental Sciences.
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Francesco Femi Marafatto
PhD Candidate |
Francesco Femi was born in Nigeria, spent his childhood in Kenya and Belgium, and then moved to Italy at age 14. He decided to study Geology at the university because fascinated by science and the idea of travelling around the world for a living. During his bachelor’s courses he became interested in environmental geology, especially because the time he spent in Africa made him sensitive to environmental issues. For his Master’s thesis, he used stable isotope methods to study chromium oxidation and reduction reactions in a contaminated aquifer in northern Italy. For his PhD, Francesco is investigating the molecular scale mecha- nism of manganese oxide photoreduction as a function of their physicochemical properties, and the implication of this process to the fate of contaminants in the environment.
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Yuheng Wang
Premier Assistant |
Yuheng’s research interests reside in the understanding of the dynamics of contaminants and nutrients in Earth surface environments. Yuheng obtained his Ph.D. in environmental mineralogy at University of Pierre & Marie CURIE (UPMC, Paris) in late 2007. He holds a M.Sc. in Goechemistry from Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris (IPGP, Paris) and B.Sc. in Chemistry of Wuhan University (Wuhan, P.R. China). He previously worked at Collège de France (Paris) and Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL, Lausanne).