Team

Principal Investigator

Dr. Yongli Wager is an Associate Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and the Co-Director of Graduate Certificate Program in Sustainable Engineering at Wayne State University. Her research focuses on the water-environment-energy nexus through the development of advanced technologies and system modeling and optimization. She has received research awards from federal and state agencies, industry, and research foundations, including NSF, EPA, Microsoft, Great Lakes Protection Fund, the State of Michigan, and the State of Montana. Currently she also serves as the Project Director of “Smart Management of Microplastic Pollution in the Great Lakes” funded by the Great Lakes Protection Fund.

Program manager

Lara Treemore-Spears is a project manager with the Healthy Urban Waters program in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. She brings an interdisciplinary background in aquatic and terrestrial ecology, resource conservation behavior, brownfield redevelopment, water chemistry and wetland construction to her role coordinating complex research projects. At Wayne State prior to helping Dr. Wager manage the microplastics project, she designed and oversaw field operations for the Flint Area Community Health and Environment Partnership, coordinated Detroit engagement in ErieHack, oversaw improvements to the Huron-to-Erie Alliance for Research and Training Field Stations, and assisted in launching the Transformative Research in Urban Sustainability Training program.

The first phase of this project developed community outreach and engagement strategies, educational materials, a sensor for real-time flow-through identification of microplastic particles using Raman spectroscopy, and a library of Raman data for post-consumer and environmental plastics.  The following team members led Phase 1 of the project.

Dr. Weisong Shi is an Alumni Distinguished Professor and Chair of the Department of Computer and Information Sciences at the University of Delaware (UD). He leads the Connected and Autonomous Research (CAR) Laboratory. Dr. Shi was the Center Director of a recently funded NSF eCAT Industry-University Cooperative Research Center (IUCRC) (2023-2028), focusing on Electric, Connected, and Autonomous Technology for Mobility. He is an internationally renowned expert in edge computing, autonomous driving, and connected health. 

Prior to joining UD, Shi was a Charles H. Gershenson Distinguished Faculty Fellow and a Professor of Computer Science at Wayne State University, investigating performance, reliability, power- and energy-efficiency, trust and privacy issues of networked computer systems and applications. Dr. Shi is one of the world leaders in the edge computing research community, and has been advocating since its inception for this computing paradigm in which the computing resources are placed at the edge of the Internet, in close proximity to mobile devices, sensors, end users and the emerging Internet of Everything. In 2016, He founded the ACM/IEEE Symposium on Edge Computing and served as the founding steering committee chair. In 2019, Dr. Shi served as the lead editor of the edge computing special issue of the prestigious IEEE journal.

Dr. Carol Miller is the Director of WSU’s Healthy Urban Waters program and the associated three field research stations. She has been the project leader for two GLPF projects and a number of efforts funded by federal agencies and private foundations including NSF, US Army Corps of Engineers, GLPF, Erb Family Foundation, American Water Works Association, and others. Dr. Miller is the US Co-Chair of the Great Lakes Science Advisory Board of the International Joint Commission. Dr. Miller is also a professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Wayne State University.

Dr. Donna Kashian is a professor of Aquatic Ecology at Wayne State University, and a visiting scientist at the Great Lakes Environmental Research Lab in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Dr. Kashian holds a Ph.D. in Zoology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her fields of specialization include assessing the influence of global climate change on contaminants in the Great Lakes; understanding ecological thresholds; investigating long-term trends in benthic communities.

Her work involves multidisciplinary collaborations incorporating science, policy, engineering, sociology, and industry professionals in addressing complex environmental issues. She strives to develop an understanding of interactions among organisms, the environment, and humans from local to global scales

Dr. Rahul Mitra (Ph.D., Purdue University) is an Associate Professor of organizational and environmental communication. His scholarship focuses on environmental organizing, corporate social responsibility, and social-ecological resilience. He is a critical-interpretive scholar and uses primarily qualitative methods, such as ethnography, interviews, oral histories, focus groups, discourse analysis, and arts-based research.

At WSU, his "Resilient Institutions & Sustainable Environments” (RISE) Lab is engaged in a number of projects, such as the Detroit Water Stories project that highlights the experiences of Detroit residents impacted by household water insecurity and the mobilization efforts of community organizers to address these problems.

Mitra's research has appeared in numerous peer-reviewed publications such as Environmental Communication, Management Communication Quarterly, Human Relations, Communication Theory, International Journal of Business Communication, Public Relations Review, and Journal of Business Ethics. In addition, he is strongly committed to public scholarship, community engagement, and translation of research for broader interdisciplinary and nonacademic audiences.

He can be followed on Twitter @rahulmitra.

Dr. Mark Cheng is a Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Biomedical Engineering, and Nanoengineering at University of Alabama. He is an expert in sensor design and microsystem packaging and integration.

His research focuses on spectrometry and wireless sensing technology for environmental sensing and has recently been published in peer-reviewed journals such as Nature Electronics and Nature Microsystems and Nanoengineering.

Phase 1 project partners included the Ingham Conservation District, an organization with a mission of empowering Ingham County residents to engage in environmental stewardship of shared land, water and wildlife resources. Recent projects focused on habitat restoration, environmental monitoring, invasive species management, forest health and watershed quality improvement. The project involved raising awareness of the ecological needs of Ingham County and involving local residents and communities in solutions.

Phase 1 project partners included Reroot Pontiac, led by Mr. Jonathan Weyhrauch, its Founder and President. Mr. Weyhrauch has substantial experience in community outreach and engagement, repurposing abandoned lots into interactive educational settings focused on ecological restoration. He has secured and managed grants for such efforts over several years. Mr. Weyhrauch is pursuing a Ph.D. in Civil Engineering at Wayne State University and has been an NSF-NRT student in the Transformative Research in Urban Sustainability and Training (T-RUST) program at Wayne State University.

Phase 1 partners included the Clinton River Watershed Council, led by Watershed Planner Chris Bobryk. Mr. Bobryk brings a diversity of experiences in natural resource planning, reclamation, and geospatial modeling to his work. Chris received a Ph.D. in Forestry from the University of Missouri and specializes in developing decision-support tools that help guide natural resource management activities. Chris led the WaterTowns® program and other initiatives related to supporting community development and climate resilience along the Clinton River and Lake St. Clair.

Over 70 individuals have advised the project, from local, regional, state and federal government, community action and watershed organizations, industry and academia, all working toward protecting the Great Lakes ecosystem. Advisory board members identify and prioritize challenges, recommend local, regional and national connections, and determine best approaches for reaching and engaging key audiences. Board members participate in focus groups based on their preference and expertise in community engagement, technologies and environmental monitoring.

Advisory board meetings provide for networking, information sharing, feedback and suggestions for project design and development.  Meetings also foster a greater shared understanding of the issues associated with microplastics in the Great Lakes.

Meetings for Phase 1 of the project were held from 2018 to 2023.  For Phase 2, a smaller group is advising on final development of an online microplastic identification tool and database, and on deploying microplastic sensing devices in the field starting in 2025.   

The team welcomes input and advice from a variety of disciplines and collaborative interests.  Feel free to contact us!