Graduate Students Tackle Sustainability at the Graduate Research Conference
Each year, graduate students have the opportunity to enter their research in the Sustainability Track of the annual UNH Graduate Research Conference. This year, 25 graduate students presented 18 poster and 18 oral presentations on a variety of sustainability-related topics, such as safer drinking water, sustainable auto manufacturing, space sustainability, and sustainable infrastructure.
As a Carnegie R1 institution, UNH is recognized for its leadership in high-impact research. In addition to faculty and research scientists, graduate and undergraduate students contribute to innovative research across disciplines. In April, more than one hundred UNH graduate and undergraduate students presented an array of sustainability-related projects.
Congratulations to all participants on the quality, creativity, and insight of their work, with special recognition for this year’s first-place award recipients!
2025 Graduate Research Conference Sustainability Track Award Winners
Oral Presentation Winner
Koorosh Asadifakhr, Civil and Environmental Engineering Ph.D. student
"Advancing Sustainable Road-Stream Crossing Management Through Stakeholder-Driven System-Level Prioritization"
“Our research aims to advance sustainable infrastructure management by developing a multi-agency, stakeholder-informed prioritization framework for road-stream crossings, which are crucial infrastructure elements connecting ecological habitats and human communities. By systematically balancing diverse stakeholder preferences and management objectives, this research contributes directly to enhancing infrastructure resilience and environmental sustainability. The framework's broader applicability offers significant potential to transform decision-making across various critical infrastructure systems, facilitating societal progress toward long-term sustainability.”
Poster Presentation Winner
Jingyan Huang, Natural Resources and Earth Systems Science, Ph.D. Candidate "City of Leaf: A Multiplayer Role-Playing Game for Enhancing Drinking Water Emergency Response"
Jingyan’s research focuses on improving responses to drinking water emergencies. To explore this, she designed a role-playing game, City of Leaf, that simulates a drinking water contamination crisis. The game serves both as an educational tool to support experiential learning and as a research tool to study inter-organizational collaboration and decision-making during water emergencies. This work contributes to Sustainable Development Goal 6 (Clean Water and Sanitation) by helping people prepare for water emergencies and work better together.
We extend our gratitude to our business and community partners for their engagement as mentors with student capstone projects.
Thank you also to the judges who donated their time and expertise to the task of selecting the winners: Dr. Dovev Levine, Dr. Erin Hale, Elisabeth Farrell and Dr. Betty Woodman.
