Yuchuan Fan successfully defended his Ph.D. dissertation: “Sustainable underground reactive barrier to attenuate contaminants from agricultural drainage.” Yuchuan’s major advisor was Dr. Jaehoon Lee and members of his committee were Dr. Michael Essington, Dr. Jie Zhuang, Dr. Sindhu Jagadamma, and Dr. John Schwartz. His research goal was to reduce nitrate and veterinary antibiotics from agricultural drainage by a management practice namely called denitrifying bioreactor (DNBR). His research provided an eco-friendly strategy to improve DNBR’s nitrate removal by adding biochar and silage leachate, established a global-wide database for the DNBR, revealed the critical relationships between nitrate removal and abiotic factors and filling materials, and developed reliable models in predicting the nitrate removal in the DNBR. All of this work will be helpful for engineers to design a sustainable and cost-effective DNBR to protect the environment. More information related to the DNBR can be seen on his website: https://denitrifying-bioreactor.webnode.com/.

            Yuchuan has accepted a postdoctoral position at the University of Florida in Dr. Jehangir (Jango) Bhadha’s research group. He will be responsible for coordinating and conducting a long-term field and watershed-scale hydrological and geospatial research network within the Everglades Agricultural Area in South Florida. He will use the Soil and Water Resources Assessment Tool (SWAT) and Agricultural Policy/Environment Extension Model (APEX) to assess best management practices.             

Yuchuan Fan comes from Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province, a beautiful city known as the “Heavenly State.” Sichuan is where giant pandas can be found in the wild and  is famous for delicious foods,  like the hot pot. Yuchan is grateful to the China Scholars Program for financial support during his Ph.D. studies.