Peter R. Jaffe, civil and environmental engineering professor at Princeton University, gave a lecture as part of the Frank L. Parker Distinguished Professor Lecture Series today at 138 Featheringill Hall. His address was titled “Microbial and Geochemical Responses to Biostimulation of U(VI) Reduction in Soils and U(IV) Post-stimulation Stability” and was sponsored by the Mason Foundation.
Jaffe’s research focuses on physical, chemical, and biological processes that affect water quality and their application towards the remediation of contaminated systems. His lecture concentrated on the biostimulation of organisms capable of reducing uranium. The biological reduction of oxidized uranium U(VI) in groundwater, which is water soluble, and its precipitation as reduced, solid-phase, uranium U(IV) has the potential to prevent uranium migration from contaminated sites.
He was chair of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Princeton University from 1999 to 2005. Jaffe has held visiting positions at the Venezuelan Research Institute, the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Austria, the University of Auckland, the Ecole des Mines D’Abi. and was an AT&T Industrial Ecology Fellow.
He has served on numerous committees and panels including the National Research Council, EPA, NIH, NSF, DOE, the Singapore Expert Panel of The Environment and Water Industry Development Council and others. He is a Board Certified Environmental Engineering Member of the American Academy of Environmental Engineers by Eminence.
Professor Jaffe obtained his Ph.D. in 1981 and MS in 1980 from Vanderbilt University in environmental and water resources engineering, and earned his BSE in chemical engineering from the Universidad Simon Bolivar in Caracas, Venezuela in 1978.