News

Sampling from the Middle

PhD student Shannon Plunkett shares her experience working in ASGM-impacted regions of Peru and Ecuador

Farewell to Andrew and Austin

This month the Hsu-Kim group bids farewell and congratulations to Dr. Austin Wadle and Dr. Andrew Middleton. Both recently completed and defended their PhD dissertations in Civil & Environmental Engineering.

Nanoscale Complexity of Arsenic and Selenium in Coal Ash

Congratulations to Dr. Nelson Rivera for publishing his paper titled "Nanoscale Heterogeneity of Arsenic and Selenium Species in Coal Fly Ash Particles: Analysis using enhanced spectroscopic imaging and speciation techniques" Environmental Science: Nano

Congratulations to Talia!

Over the weekend we celebrated with our graduates at Duke, including our lab's most recent alumna - Dr. Talia Neal-Walthall. Last month, Talia successfully defended her Ph.D. dissertation titled "Methylmercury Production and Bioaccumulation in Freshwater...

Superfund Research Program - Research Brief

Read a research brief from the NIEHS Superfund Research Program or listen to an audio podcast of Talia's recent ES&T paper on the use of DGT passive samplers for evaluating methylmercury bioaccumulation potential in wetlands. https://tools.niehs.nih....

Lab Alumni Update - Sarah Diringer

Lab alum Dr. Sarah Diringer tells Methodspace about the skills she learned as a member of the Bass Connection team during her doctoral studies at Duke. Sarah is currently the Water Program Officer of the Pisces Foundation. We are so proud of your...

New paper in ES&T on passive samplers for mercury bioavailability

Congratulations to Talia Neal-Walthall for publishing her first paper in Environmental Science & Technology, titled "Utility of Diffusive Gradient in Thin-Film (DGT) Passive Samplers for Predicting Mercury Methylation Potential and Bioaccumulation in...

Identifying Exposure Risks from Common Household Chemicals in Durham Homes

The Hsu-Kim group will be helping to start-up a new project in Durham, North Carolina to examine exposures to chemicals derived from materials inside the home and evaluate mitigation strategies to reduce exposures for families.

Vesicle Project Website

The Hsu-Kim group is part of an interdisciplinary team investigating extracellular vesicles (EVs) in the environment. EVs are cellular secretions packaged in a nano-sized phospholipid envelope and are generated by organisms for a variety of reasons,...

Bridging Policy, Research, and Implementation in ASGM

Artisanal and small gold mining (ASGM) typically entails the use of liquid elemental mercury to extract gold from soils and sediment. This practice occurs in more than 70 countries around the world and collectively contributes the largest source of...

Dr. Faye!

Congratulations to Dr. Faye Koenigsmark for successfully defending her PhD dissertation titled "From Source to Surveillance: An Assessment of Liquid Elemental Mercury Mobilization in Soil, Downstream Reactivity, and Biomarkers of Exposure". Well done!

New Year, New Building!

We've finished moving to our new lab in the Pratt School's new Wilkinson Building!       And to the Hudson Hall labs, we bid you a bittersweet farewell. Thanks for the great memories and heartaches! We've finished moving to our new lab in the Pratt School's new Wilkinson Building!

Rare earth solubilization from coal by-products

Kudos to Andrew for publishing his first paper for his dissertation! Middleton, A.; Park, D.M.; Jiao, Y.; Hsu-Kim, H. (2020). Major element composition controls rare earth element solubility during leaching of coal fly ash and coal by-products. Intl. J....

New paper on the linkages of deforestation and mercury loadings from artisanal gold mining

Check out a new paper published in ES&T on study led by Hsu-Kim lab alum Dr. Sarah Diringer and collaborating PhD student Axel Berky. Sarah and Axel combined satellite imagery, soil erosion models, and water quality data from the field to evaluate...

Faye presents her work at the Superfund Research Program Annual Meeting

The total level of mercury in hair is often used as a biomarker for dietary methylmercury exposure for individuals. However, if a person could be exposed to both methylmercury and inorganic mercury, such as those living near artisinal gold mining areas,...