Graduate Fellows Bio
Sherri Cook
Her Story
Sherri's focus on energy recovery from waste started while she was in high school with science fair projects. She continued to research anaerobic waste management systems during her undergraduate education at Virginia Tech where she graduated with a B.S. in Civil Engineering. Now a graduate student in the Environmental and Water Resources Engineering program, part of the Civil & Environmental Engineering Department, Sherri focuses on waste and wastewater management systems that recover resources with projects in Michigan and Nicaragua
Her Research
Sherri's work with waste resource recovery system sustainability is focused on the performance and reliability of anaerobic digestion systems (biologically converting carbonaceous waste into methane). The overarching goal of her research is the identification and development of resource recovery systems that optimize energy and nutrient recovery from waste in order to minimize environmental impacts. She is looking at both the macro-scale performance of these systems as well as the micro-scale biological activity and trends