The Illinois Water Environment Association (IWEA) has presented Southern Illinois University Edwardsville’s Azadeh Akhavan Bloorchian with the 2013 Best Technical Presentation Award.
Akhavan Bloorchian presented “Survey of Green Infrastructures for Sewers Overflow Reduction in Metropolitan St. Louis” during the 2013 WaterCon in Springfield. While working toward a doctorate in environmental engineering, she is a research assistant within the SIUE School of Engineering’s Department of Civil Engineering.
Akhavan Bloorchian will be honored at the annual IWEA Awards Banquet Monday, March 17, at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Museum-Library in Springfield.
“I was always interested in water resources,” Akhavan Bloorchian said. “While working on research with my advisors, Dr. (Jianpeng) Zhou and Dr. (Susan) Morgan, I got more interested in green infrastructure and stormwater management.
“Green infrastructures are important as part of a sustainable approach to stormwater management. Installing them helps with decreasing the amount of runoff flow to combined sewer systems, resulting in less overflow.”
The National Great Rivers Research and Education Center (NGRREC) funded Akhavan Bloorchian’s project.
“Azadeh’s work provided valuable information about the status of green infrastructure application in the metropolitan St. Louis area,” said Zhou, associate professor and chair of the SIUE Department of Civil Engineering. “Findings from her project benefitted a few other green infrastructure research projects that SIUE civil engineering faculty members work on.
“Her work fits the current effort to reduce combined sewer overflow in St. Louis for the protection of the Illinois, Missouri and Mississippi rivers.”
A native of Tehran, Iran, Akhavan Bloorchian earned a bachelor’s in natural resource engineering at the Isfahan University of Technology in Iran. She achieved a master’s in environmental pollution at the Tehran Science and Research Campus of Azad University. She earned another master’s in civil engineering from SIUE in 2013.