Does providing some sort of improved latrine for children in developing countries actually improve their health? The obvious answer would seem to be “yes.” But the truth is, we don’t have the hard science to prove it.

A dozen School of Civil and Environmental Engineering students spent their Spring Break working in La Paz, Bolivia, and nearby rural communities. Traipsing around with strange apparatuses hanging around their necks or dipping graduated cylinders into lakes and under water spigots. Connecting their years of classroom study to the real world.

A team of environmental scientists in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering has won this year’s top research prize from the American Academy of Environmental Engineers & Scientists. The 2015 Grand Prize in Research in the academy’s Excellence in Environmental Engineering and Science Competition recognizes the group’s work on contamination at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina.

When oil from the Deepwater Horizon spill first began washing ashore on Pensacola Municipal Beach in June 2010, populations of sensitive microorganisms, including those that capture sunlight or fix nitrogen from the air, began to decline. At the same time, organisms able to digest light components of the oil began to multiply, starting the process of converting the pollutant to carbon dioxide and biomass.