CEE PhD Student Ben Eck Awarded NSF GRFP
Ben Eck, a PhD student in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, was awarded a 2021 National Science Foundation Research Fellowship award (NSF GRFP). The award is prestigious and highly selective, and recognizes outstanding graduate students who are pursuing a full-time research-based master’s or doctoral degree in STEM. Mr. Eck is a advised by Assistant Professor Amy Mueller. Additionally, he is a Cochrane Fellow.
The GRFP will support Eck’s work in Dr. Mueller’s Environmental Sensors Lab, where he studies the development of sensors to monitor nutrient population in coastal environments. Existing sensors for seawater are currently cost-prohibitive to deploy in adequate density to capture true spatial variability. Mueller and Eck are developing simple, low-cost sensors and using machine learning techniques to turn the collected information into actionable data.
Ben Eck earned his bachelor’s degree in Civil and Environmental Engineering from MIT in 2015 before spending several years implementing environmental sensing technologies in the field at startups and more established small businesses. He joined Dr. Amy Mueller’s Environmental Sensors Lab at Northeastern in 2020 as a Cochrane Fellow. Mr. Eck joins other students within the Department and at COE who have earned GRFPs this year and previous. For a full list of this year’s Northeastern awardees, visit here.