Bartelt-Hunt, Hasan among featured participants in Nebraska Research Days

Nebraska Engineering faculty Shannon Bartelt-Hunt and M.R. Hasan were among the featured presenters at UNL’s annual Nebraska Research Days, which were held Nov. 6-10 on City Campus.

Bartelt-Hunt, the Donald R. Voelte Jr. and Nancy A. Keegan Chair of Engineering and department chair and professor of civil and environmental engineering, presented "Our Water, Our Health" as the Nebraska Lecture on Thursday, Nov. 9. This seminar reviews some of the challenges and opportunities we face in Nebraska related to our water and wastewater resources, such as:

• With increasing demands placed on our water supplies for industry, agriculture and community use, microcontaminants can be introduced to our surface and groundwater with implications for human and environmental health.
• The COVID-19 pandemic motivated a desire to evaluate community wastewater as an important source of health information.

Bartelt-Hunt's seminar was delivered via Zoom and was followed by a live moderated Q&A with Sherri Jones, interim vice chancellor for research and economic development.

Hasan, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering, was among the five selected UNL researchers chosen to present short talks in the annual Faculty Research and Creative Activity Slam on Wednesday, Nov. 8 at the Wick Alumni Center. Hasan discussed his personal AI, a doppelganger he calls HAL 2.0, which Hasan said has acces to various aspects of his life, including his health, education, career and hobbies in addition to access to a vast external knowledge base.