Dr Kefeng Zhang awarded the 2016 Eric Laurenson Medal

A world-first framework that validates the ability of natural stormwater treatment systems to remove micropollutants has earned CRCWSC PhD graduate Dr Kefeng Zhang this year’s Eric Laurenson Medal. The honour marks the third consecutive year in which the medal has been awarded to a CRCWSC researcher.

Until now, natural stormwater treatment systems – such as biofilters wetlands, and managed aquifer recharge (MAR) – have not been accredited for their removal capacity because not method existed to validate their function. Developed during his PhD, Dr Zhang’s framework includes a modelling tool that is calibrated using simple laboratory and in-situ tests. Together, they will now enable industry to validate large biofiltration systems which cannot otherwise be tested.

The framework comprises three stages: determining the operational challenges of a system; monitoring the system’s performance and ability to cope under challenging conditions; and directly monitoring the pollutants (or appropriate surrogates) to ensure that defined treatment targets are consistently met. Dr Zhang’s research was supervised by Professor Ana Deletic and Dr David McCarthy from Monash University, and Dr Declan Page from CSIRO.

The Eric Laurenson Medal is awarded annually to a recent Monash University PhD graduate who has demonstrated excellence in areas such as the quality of their PhD thesis; the potential of their research to seed changes to practice in water science, engineering, or management; and the recipient’s ability to communicate their research findings to industry.

Eric Laurenson, a former Chair of Civil Engineering (Water Resources) at Monash, was an influential figure in engineering hydrology in Australia. He made major contributions to many areas of flood estimation research including frequency analysis, dam safety, design losses, flood routing, and joint probability of factors affecting runoff generation and flow.

Dr Zhang is now a Research Fellow in the Civil Engineering Department of Monash University and will continue to finalise his work on the water sensitive cities toolkit until July 2017