Ann Christy is an associate professor in the Department of Food, Agricultural, and Biological Engineering. She grew up in Columbus, earning both her B.S. in agricultural engineering and M.S. in biomedical engineering at OSU, and her Ph.D. in environmental engineering at Clemson University in SC. She previously worked for an environmental consulting firm in NJ before joining the faculty at OSU and still continues to collaborate with the environmental consulting industry. She teaches courses in professional development, biological engineering, pollution control, waste management, environmental control, engineering statistics, and capstone design. Ann has been the chair of her department’s undergraduate studies committee since 2000 and has won multiple teaching awards at the departmental, college, university, and national levels. Her research interests include microbial fuel cells, landfills, environmental fate and transport in fractured glacial till, and technical education. She leads an OSU extension program called “Barn Again” about the rehabilitation of historic agricultural structures. Ann currently resides in an 1870s dairy barn which was converted into a home. She is a second-generation woman engineer; her mother worked as an industrial engineer in the aeronautical industry. Ann is a licensed professional engineer.
Click here to visit Dr. Christy's web page
Hamid Rismani-Yazdi is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Food, Agricultural, and Biological Engineering. He grew up in Isfahan, Iran, earned his B.S. in Animal Sciences and M.S. in Ruminant Nutrition/Rumen Microbiology at Isfahan University of Technology and is pursuing his Ph.D. in biological engineering at OSU. He worked as a visiting scholar at the Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center before joining the graduate school at OSU in 2004. Hamid has been both a graduate research associate and a teaching assistant at OSU. His research interests include microbial fuel cells, integrated processes for bioenergy and biofuels production, biological pretreatment of lignocellulosic materials, and bioprospecting for novel microorganisms. Hamid’s doctoral dissertation research, which has been conducted under the direction of Dr. Ann D. Christy in close collaboration with an interdisciplinary team of scholars, looks at the design and development of a microbial fuel cell system for direct conversion of cellulose into electrical energy. In recognition of this work, he has received “the 2007 William E. Krauss Award for Excellence in Graduate Research,” from OSU's College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences.
Click here to visit Hamid Rismani-Yazdi's web page
Nikki Skrinak is an undergraduate student in the Department of Food, Agricultural and Biological Engineering, where she studies ecological engineering. Over the past year, in addition to building this website, she has worked as a research assistant on a project examining wetland ecology, and has assumed a leadership role in student associations that have sought to make Ohio State University more sustainable. She is currently working as an integral part of the South Africa Water Reuse Initiative (SAWRI), which is developing a greywater reuse system coupled with an irrigation system for an elementary school in a settlement outside Durban, South Africa.
This site was developed by Nikki from a grant received from the Research on Research program at the Digital Union at The Ohio State University. Nikki would like to thank Rob Griffiths, Dave Hooker, Vicky Getis, Tom German, and Joe Bondra at the Digital Union for patiently providing their insights and suggestions. This project could not have been completed without them. She would also like to thank Dr. Ann Christy and Hamid Rismani-Yazdi for their generosity with their time to aid in the development of the content for this site.
Additional collaborators:
Olli H. Tuovinen, Professor
Department of Microbiology
Visit Dr. Tuovinen's web page
Zhongtang Yu, Assistant Research Professor
Department of Microbiology
Visit Dr. Yu's web page
