My friend Dr. Janice stops by to discuss her research into the remediation of pollution, especially with microbes! There have thankfully be some advancement in remediation of things like chromium and uranium that can be achieved with our favorite unsung heroes, microbes! I also ask how Dr. Kenney she became interested in the environment, microbiology and remediation! This is an incredible conversation with a brilliant human being!
As an environmental geochemist, Dr. Kenney’s research is inherently interdisciplinary and concerns understanding the fate and transport of contaminants in the environment. Specifically, her research program focuses on the concentration and flux of contaminants in the environment, focusing on how the mobility of those contaminants can be influenced by interfaces, such as rocks/minerals, bacteria, and organic matter and developing surface complexation models to describe those reactions. In addition, Dr. Kenney is also interested in how biomineralization by microorganisms can either reduce or increase contaminant mobility in hydrogeochemical systems, depending on the water chemistry of the system and type of organism involved.Dr. Kenney received her undergraduate degree from the University of Windsor, majoring in Geology and minoring in Chemistry. She then went on to do a PhD in Geochemistry at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, where she studied how bacteria could remove metals from water, and developed mathematical models for those reactions. Following these studies she went on to work in Sweden and the UK, studying the geochemical and geomicrobiological transformations of nutrients, pesticides and radioactive waste in the environment.Dr. Kenney’s current research interests involve understanding how pharmaceuticals, identified as a world-wide contaminant type of emerging concern, can be released into the environment and the mechanisms of removing these pharmaceuticals or making them less toxic for downstream ecosystems.Research and Scholarly InterestsThe goal of Dr. Kenney’s current research program is to develop a better understanding of the mobility of pharmaceuticals in the environment, including how they interact with environmental surfaces and colloids (i.e., soil minerals, organic matter, bacteria) and the pathways and nature of any breakdown products that may be released into the environment. To do this, Dr. Kenney uses state-of-the-art equipment housed at MacEwan, such as Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, Raman microspectroscopy and liquid chromatography coupled with mass spectrometry. Dr. Kenney’s research is currently supported by a Natural Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) Discovery Grant. Dr. Kenney is cross listed between chemistry and Earth and planetary sciences at MacEwan. As such, the courses she teaches tend to be as multidisciplinary as her research. She regularly teaches introductory Earth Science courses, as well as upper year geochemistry and biogeochemistry courses. These upper year courses focus on how thermodynamics can decide which minerals will be prominent in a system, depending on the chemistry as well as pressure/temperature relationship in that system; how we can use isotopes to understand the ages of rocks as well as past climates; and how bacteria are able to cycle elements around the globe. Dr. Kenney has also supervised a range of undergraduate independent research courses, with topics ranging from the sorption of cadmium to lake sediments to the breakdown of pharmaceuticals in soils. Dr. Kenney is available to supervise independent study students.
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