Dear Donors,
Thank you for allowing me to obtain summer research experience through the McGill Alumni and Friends Science Undergraduate Research Award. I am truly grateful for your support and generosity, which has allowed me work in a research environment and achieve several goals and aspirations. This summer research opportunity has helped me to create new personal goals for future endeavors.
I am currently a U3 undergraduate McGill student studying Earth System Science. Under the supervisor, Professor Bernhard Lehner, I have worked with GIS (Geographic Information System) software to help create a global wastewater treatment plant database. This is important research because a global wastewater treatment plant database has never been created. Additionally, not all wastewater treatment plants are 100% efficient in removing specific chemical compounds from wastewater, potentially leading to river contamination from where the wastewater exits the treatment plant. Information for treatment plants were obtained from various sources and included name, location, treatment type, population treated, and wastewater volume. This research was investigated to potentially lead to a global chemical fate model. As of now, information on thousands of treatment plants have been gathered, spatially checked for accuracy using satellite imagery, and manually moved to river networks to identify potential river pollution. The global database is not yet complete, but we have made great leaps in the research project.
I was born and raised in Vancouver but was drawn to McGill’s reputation as an elite university for scientific studies and tightly knit community. As a student studying Earth System Science, I enjoy the wide variety of topics that my classes cover, including geology, atmospheric science, system modelling, geography, and sustainability. My department is also small, allowing for easy interaction and connection between Earth System Science students. In the future, I plan to enroll in a graduate program for Earth Sciences in Montreal or in Vancouver, hopefully continuing practice with GIS software. I aspire to one day obtain a job focused on hydrology or environmental hazard mitigation using GIS software.
With this summer research experience, I have learned organization and time management skills for achieving specific goals. I have also learned that although organization is important, adaptation is equally as important, as several tasks had to be redone differently. A large task that I had was to combine and simplify data obtained from previous research students, which were sometimes contradictory. This research taught me that scientific data is often disorganized and somewhat inaccurate, which is never the case when presented in a class. I now understand the small but necessary steps required to achieve scientific results. I am extremely honoured and thankful for the opportunity to learn such skills through this research opportunity.
Best Regards,
Antonio Limtong