During last year’s Waste Management Symposia, DOE Fellow (Ms. Leydi Velez) presented a professional poster at this conference. The poster detailed her work on the development of a Decision Analysis Tool for Surveillance & Maintenance of DOE Facilities at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). Leydi got engaged in this work during her summer internship at ORNL during summer 2008. There Leydi had the opportunity to work with ORNL scientists and engineers and started the development of this decision model. Leydi continued the this work once she returned to FIU and continued the development of this model with closed collaboration with ORNL engineers, DOE-HQ personnel, ARC staff, and FIU faculty. Last November, Ms. Velez was notified that her poster was selected as Best Professional Poster for WM 2009. Leydi will be attending WM10 were an award will be presented in front of a large national and international audience of Waste Management professionals. Leydi’s effort on this model will continue and she hopes to expand this model to include additional DOE sites and include a “cost” module to her model. This work will also serve as Leydi’s Master thesis requirement and she is collaborating with FIU faculty members in this work. Leydi will be interning at DOE-HQ this coming summer and she is in the process of applying to DOE-EM’s Professional Development Corps. This is truly a success story, Leydi’s family came from Colombia and she is first generation US citizen. The DOE Fellows Program has provided Leydi with the necessary tools to succeed and according to Leydi “it has inspired her to achieve great things.” Leydi hopes to enter the EMPDC program this summer and work at DOE-HQ in Washington DC.
Tags: 2009, Posters, Waste Management Symposia