Rochelle Widmer awarded 2019 Nels Nelson Memorial Fellowship
Rochelle Widmer, Masters Candidate in the Department of Civil, Environmental, and Geo- Engineering and student at the St. Anthony Falls Laboratory, was awarded the 2019 Nels Nelson Memorial Fellowship during a special SAFL seminar on May 7th, 2019. The Nels Nelson Memorial Fellowship is awarded annually to a University of Minnesota student pursuing her/his Master’s degree in a water resources-related discipline at the St. Anthony Falls Laboratory. Special consideration is given to students involved in hydraulics, hydrology, sediment transport, water quality or surface water management.
Rochelle received a monetary award to support her research, a certificate, and recognition on the SAFL website and in future presentations of the award. She is advised by Dr. Kimberly Hill of the Department of Civil, Environmental, and Geo- Engineering at the University of Minnesota.
Rochell's research, titled “Laboratory Studies of Segregation in Prograding Deltas of TSRU Tailings," studies the segregation and depositional behaviors of TSRU tailings, a fine-grained waste material produced in the Alberta Oil Sands refining process, toward the long-term goal of faster, more effective environmental restoration. The research used both surrogate material and real tailings material. She briefly presented similarities between the flow, segregation, and depositional behaviors of these two materials that have also been reported in other, natural prograding deltas, and also some distinct differences in the behaviors of the TSRU tailings relevant to environmental restoration issues.
Several friends and colleagues attended the ceremony held in the SAFL auditorium, including Kathy Nelson (Nelson's wife), and the award presentation was followed by a Distinguished Lecture given by Cory Anderson, Water Resources Engineer at Barr Engineering.