Special honors for five graduating environmental engineering seniors

Jeff Zehnder — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 20:35:49 +0000

Special honors for five graduating environmental engineering seniors Jeff Zehnder Tue, 04/28/2026 - 14:35

Jeff Zehnder

The College of Engineering and Applied Science is recognizing five Environmental Engineering seniors with Graduating Student Awards.

Darwin Hanson, Meghan Holland, Trinity Johnston, Morgan McDonough, and Abdulrahman Mokhtar are each being honored in three categories for individual accomplishments as students in CU Engineering.

Culture Impact Award - This award recognizes undergraduate students who make substantive contributions to the culture within the college by cultivating care, community, and collaborations that honor the unique contributions of others.
- Honoree: Abdulrahman Mokhtar
Community Impact Award - Recognizes undergraduate students who contribute to improving their department/program, college, university, and/or local community.
- Honoree: Morgan McDonough
Global Engagement Award - This award recognizes undergraduate students who are globally engaged in areas such as research, service, professional work, study abroad, or through organizations like Engineers Without Borders.
- Honoree: Meghan Holland
Perseverance Award - Recognizes undergraduate students who persevere despite adversity – above and beyond the inherent perseverance needed in any engineering major.
- Honorees: Darwin Hanson & Trinity Johnston

Students are nominated for these awards by faculty, staff or their peer students. Nominations are reviewed and chosen by special selection committees at the college level.

Find out more about each winner and their post-graduation plans below.

Darwin Hanson

Perseverance Award

I am grateful to be recognized for the Perseverance Award because it reinforces all the hard work that I put into earning this degree. All the struggles I went through were testaments to my strength and intelligence, and being recognized for this award reminds me of those traits I will carry into my future career.

Post-Graduation Plans: I am looking forward to spending the summer in Boulder and travelling around for a bit. In August, I will move to San Francisco, CA for an Environmental Consulting job at Langan Environmental and Engineering Services.

Meghan Holland

Global Engagement Award

This award is a huge honor attesting to the hundreds of hours I have spent working with Engineers Without Borders and Engineers in Action in order to use knowledge acquired in the classroom to benefit others around the world. I am so grateful to the friendships I have made here at CU as we learn to be humanitarian engineers. My heart is also incredibly full because of all of the friendships I have made overseas in Nepal, Eswatini, and Rwanda during my work here as an undergraduate.

Post-Graduation Plans: Shortly after graduation I will begin my career as a Civil Engineering Officer for the US Navy, where I will continue to lead mission-oriented projects around the world. Sko Buffs and Go Navy!

Trinity Johnston

Perseverance Award

To me, being recognized highlights that accomplishments are still possible despite adversity and insecurity. Growing up, I never thought I'd amount to much, let alone "be smart enough" to study engineering. I wouldn't be where I am if it weren't for the friends and professors supporting and believing in me when I failed to. I hope that this award is a reminder to people to lift up those around you and to push yourself to explore and simply attempt the opportunities around you.

Post-Graduation Plans: After graduating, I'm looking forward to finishing my Legendary Halo Campaign and re-installing Overwatch and Siege, hiking/camping, 3-hour long arm days, and adding to my 5ft tall Godzilla painting collection. I'm also excited to continue my time working at Xcel Energy with the Distribution Planning team!

Morgan McDonough

Community Impact Award

This recognition means so much to me. While I have gotten so much out of each experience whether that's the incredible people I have met or the joyful memories I have made, receiving this award will serve as a reminder that I have also made an impact on my community, and will drive me to continue dedicating time to serving others.

Post-Graduation Plans: I am excited for the opportunity to work for Trotter and Associates Inc, which is a full-service engineering firm in the west and north suburbs of Chicago.

Abdulrahman Mokhtar

Culture Impact Award

To me, this recognition means a great deal because it reflects the impact of building community, supporting others, and contributing to a positive and inclusive environment within CU Engineering. My time at ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� has shaped me not only as an Environmental Engineering student, but also as a person, and I’m grateful to have been part of a community where I could grow while also giving back.

Post Graduation Plans: I plan on applying all that I have learned back home in Saudi Arabia. I aspire to be one of the country’s young leaders who contributes to the Kingdom’s Vision 2030 by helping develop meaningful, practical, and sustainable solutions that support the nation’s future.

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Two environmental engineering students earn major National Science Foundation fellowship

Jeff Zehnder — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 15:01:13 +0000

Two environmental engineering students earn major National Science Foundation fellowship Jeff Zehnder Wed, 04/15/2026 - 09:01

Two environmental engineering graduate students have earned prestigious National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program awards.

Grace Berg and Kate Rodelli are 2026 recipients of the NSF GRFP awards, which recognize and support outstanding grad students from across the country in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields who are pursuing research-based master’s or doctoral degrees.

Awardees receive a $37,000 annual stipend and cost of education allowance for the next three years as well as professional development opportunities.

Find out about their research below:

Grace Berg

1st Year PhD Student

Advisor: Mike Hannigan
Lab: Hannigan Air Quality and Technology Research (HAQ) Lab

My proposed research focuses on leveraging low-cost sensors, activity data, and crowdsourced reporting to characterize overlapping environmental hazards—such as air pollution, extreme heat, and noise—in urban environments. My goals are to identify coincident drivers of multiple hazards and help cities be more strategic about data collection and mitigation actions.

Kate Rodelli

1st year PhD student

Advisors: Daven Henze and Kelvin Bates
Labs: Henze Group, Bates Lab

Nitrogen oxides (NOₓ) and ammonia (NH₃) are primary contributors to reactive nitrogen (Nr) deposition and react in the atmosphere to form aerosol ammonium nitrate, a key component of fine particulate matter (PM₂.₅). PM₂.₅ causes over four million premature deaths annually, and nitrogen deposition degrades ecosystems. While U.S. NOₓ emissions have declined, NH₃ emissions remain highly uncertain and are often systematically underestimated, limiting the predictive skill of air quality models such as GEOS-Chem. My research uses satellite observations to improve reactive nitrogen emission estimates. I will conduct a high-temporal-resolution joint inversion of NO₂ and NH₃, assimilating TEMPO, CrIS, and IASI satellite observations into GEOS-Chem using an ensemble-based data assimilation framework. This work will produce more accurate emission estimates that strengthen predictions of air quality and nitrogen deposition, supporting exposure assessment, ecosystem analysis, and policy-relevant decision making.

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