Recent News
ASCE student chapter wins ‘26 competition at Rocky Mountains Symposium
May 5, 2026
UNM ITE wins Outstanding Student Chapter Award
April 9, 2026
Two civil engineering students receive top awards at Graduate Poster Showcase
April 1, 2026
Riley selected as NMSPE Engineer of the Year
March 3, 2026
News Archives
Arsenic and Algae: Finding Sustainable Water Purification Systems
October 16, 2017
A University of New Mexico undergraduate engineering student thinks algae could solve the problem of arsenic contamination in water.
Chase Stearnes says he got the idea after hearing about researchers who were able to use algae to collect and harvest gold from water samples.
“I heard about that research and thought ‘ok, what else can we do with that?’ and I’m interested in rural communities and developing water resources,” Stearnes said. “So, I combined those two into the idea of creating an algal biofilm treatment system that could possibly help communities in places like India and Bangladesh.”
Read the entire story here.
