User:Teamcurie/sandbox

Lisa Rodenburg
Lisa Rodenburg was raised in Centerville, Ohio. She was the fourth of five children and was constantly picked on by her older siblings. Both her parents received PhDs in Chemistry and so they were very encouraging in terms of providing her and her siblings with an education. She learned to “fend for [herself] at an early age” due to her parents’ hands-off parenting style.

She grew up caring about the environment because of the highway by-pass, known as I-675, that turned her rural town into a mass strip of malls. Lisa also grew up with many interests, though she swore to never be a scientist because her parents would relate even the simplest things to science. For example, when Lisa would bake pies with her mother, she would “...explain how starches polymerize and measure the Crisco by water displacement”.

Education
Lisa Rodenburg attended Centerville High School in Ohio. When it came time to apply to college, however, she did not know where she wanted to go. While her friends were determined to get into schools such as Harvard and Princeton, Lisa wanted none of it. First, she was afraid that she could not compete at such great schools. She also did not want to miss her three-year-old sister growing up. She decided on attending at Wittenberg University, which was close to home.

Wittenberg, is a small liberal arts school, and since her high school had around the same amount of students as the college, it was easy for Lisa to adapt. She participated in many activities such as editing school journals, joining a debate team, and going on trips to Europe. She also went through several different majors throughout her college career: “English, Russian, psychology, biology, and finally, chemistry”. Due to her natural desire to face challenges, Lisa declared her chemistry degree her senior and still graduated on time.

She got married and moved to New Jersey after graduating. There, she worked at a pharmaceutical company along with facing many obstacles along the way, like a boss who was a male chauvinist, who warned her male co-workers from talking to her, claiming her to be young and impressionable. Only then did Lisa realize that with a PhD she would not be working under people who believe that are smarter than she; thus, she began her path to graduate school in environmental engineering. After finishing graduate school, Lisa moved back to New Jersey, where she received a postdoctoral position at Rutgers.

Profession at Rutgers University
Lisa loves working at Rutgers University because she finally felt, for the first time, accepted for who she was. She moved up positions “...from post-doc to ‘Laboratory Researcher’ to an Assistant Research Professor… to an Assistant Professor”, something fairly odd for someone in her field to do. She is now a tenured professor at Rutgers University and currently teaches a course called Fundamentals of Environmental Geomatics. All together, she posses a total of 17 years of experience in an academic and research driven environment.

Achievements
Lisa Rodenburg has many achievements in both her academic and professional life. She has been published at least 23 times and has even appeared in a segment of Good Morning America as an expert on the effects of PCB-11 and other PCB’s in pigments. Rodenburg has numerous awards under her belt including the following: Excellence in Review Award from Environmental Science and Technology 2014, Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation Post-Doctoral Fellowship in Environmental Chemistry, ACS Environmental Division Graduate Student Paper Award 1998, ACS Environmental Division Graduate Student Award 1998, Graduate Student Fellowship, National Science Foundation, 1994-1997, Dean’s Fellowship, Johns Hopkins University, Whiting School of Engineering, 1993, 1998, National Merit Scholar, 1987-1991, Graduated Summa Cum Laude from Wittenberg University.

Research Interests
Much of Lisa’s research centers around the use of PCB’s (Polychlorinated biphenyls), PBDE’s (Polybrominated diphenyl ethers), and POP’s (Persistent organic pollutants). Lisa gravitates toward researching the effects of these different chemicals as well as other possible contaminants in our environment.

Project Involvement
Some of the projects she has participated in include data collection from the NY/NJ Harbor, Raritan River,and Delaware River, chemical fingerprinting in the Spokane County Water Reclamation Facility, and many more.