Melina Idarraga (Civil Engineering)

Melina Idarraga (Civil Engineering) About DOE Fellow: Melina Idarraga graduated from Florida International University with a Bachelor of Science degree in Civil Engineering in 2008. She is currently finishing her Master’s degree in Environmental Engineering from Florida International University. Since she left the DOE Fellows program in the Fall of 2010, she started working full-time with Telemundo Studios Miami, a NBCUniversal Company currently owned by Comcast. Ms. Idarraga is an Environmental Health and Safety Specialist. Her responsibilities include supervising stunt and Pyro scenes, making sure all the precautions has been taken to minimize the risk of injuries to anybody or impact to the environment. Melina is no longer working with Telemundo Studios; she is now working with Nova Consulting as an assistant engineer.

Accomplishments as a DOE Fellow :
In the Fall of 2008, Ms. Idarraga interned with Mentor Rashid Istambouli, P.E., Department of Environmental Resource Management (DERM). Her task was to determine an approximate water consumption rate at different hair/nails and waxing salons in Miami-Dade County. Melina also interned in the Summer of 2009 with Mentor Dawn Wellman, Ph. D., Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL). Her tasks was to quantify the dissolution of autunite as a function of aqueous bicarbonate.

During the year 2009, Melina worked under the supervision of her Applied Research Center (ARC) mentor, Dr. Yelena Katsenovich, and collaborated on the project entitled “Rapid Deployment of Engineered Solutions for Environmental Problems at Hanford” where she worked specifically on the sub-task “Investigation of Uranium Contamination in Hanford soil. She specifically contributed to Subtask #1, “Effect of pH and temperature on carbonate-promoted dissolution of meta-autunite. She received the DOE Fellow of the Year award runner up at the 2009 induction ceremony. Melina worked on her thesis, a bench scale approach to quantify the dissolution of autunite at the Hanford Site as a function of aqueous bicarbonate. She participated in the student poster exhibition and presented the effects of aqueous bicarbonate in the dissolution rate of autunite as US DOE’s Hanford Site subsurface soil at the Waste Management Symposia 2010-Improving the Future by Dealing with the Past.