🏆Congratulations to Hector Fajardo for receiving the STEPS Director's Fellowship!

📉 Hector will develop models for simulating phosphorus flows at the STEPS TBLs. He will develop scenarios for different nutrient recommendation philosophies and farmers’ applications & measure their impact on P use.

💡 Our team built a robust IC-ICP-MS (Ion Chromatography–Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry) method to accurately separate and measure both inorganic and complex organic P compounds.

Read the paper in Water Research: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0043135425014587

🌾 STEPS researchers have published a new study ,"Pre-flooding phosphorus-iron interactions and nutrient uptake under flooded rice cultivation in histosols of South Florida," pinpointing how crucial phosphorus-iron (P-Fe) interactions are in fields.

🔗 https://doi.org/10.1080/01904167.2025.2563297

We’re excited to kick off our Scholar of the Month series! We celebrate the scholars whose dedication, leadership, & research are integral to the success of STEPS.

This month, we’re proud to recognize two scholars: Maria Torres and Smitom Swapna Borah.

#STEMExcellence #PhosphorusSustainability

🤩 What a week at #SPS8Africa in Ghana! STEPS was thrilled to be part of the first Sustainable Phosphorus Summit held in Africa. We had great conversations about what phosphorus sustainability looks like on different continents. Thank you so much to the conference organizers and local hosts!

STEPS will be at the Sustainable Phosphorus Summit 8 #SPS8Africa in Ghana next week! Our researchers will be participating in a variety of panels and lightning talks. We welcome people to connect with us at the conference. Will we see you there?

Did you know cerium phosphate can be recovered from our waste as an economical method for phosphate recovery? If not, then URINE for a real treat when you read STEPS new publication by Crane & Boyer: https://www-sciencedirect-com.prox.lib.ncsu.edu/science/article/pii/S1383586625037177?via%3Dihub

As a convergence research center, we like to bring our team together to learn about site-specific work and challenges, and to help our team grow and develop convergent solutions. This September, we hosted a retreat at our Cornbelt triple bottom line site. Many thanks to our hosts and stakeholders!

🌿 Check out this recent publication by STEPS researchers using an enzyme-based microsensor to measure concentrations of eATP in growth zones of Arabidopsis roots.

📄 Read it in Plant Signaling and Behavior 20(1): #abstract#abstract" class="hover:underline text-blue-600 dark:text-sky-400 no-card-link" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-link="bsky">https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15592324.2025.2555965#abstract

STEPS is a proud sponsor of this week's P Forum. Several of our researchers will be sharing updates. We look forward to seeing you there! For the full schedule, visit the P Forum website: https://na.eventscloud.com/website/78672/agenda/

#PForum25

Dr. Jacob Jones will be the featured speaker at the Great Lakes ReNew seminar on December 3 at 3pm EST. In his talk, "Phosphorus Sorbents and Their Use in Phosphorus Sustainability," he will share details of the exciting research in sorbents happening in STEPS. Register: https://loom.ly/iQ9c-GY

Shout out to STEPS scholar Darrell Harry, who gave a seminar talk Friday as part of NC State's Department of Material Science Excellence in Graduate Research series. His shared his STEPS' research on metal inorganic materials, a promising materials category for capturing and recovering phosphorus.

Congratulations to Xue Bai, who recently graduated from the University of Florida with her PhD in soil & water sciences. Her dissertation was Assessment of Sugar Cane and Flooded Rice Crop Rotation Effects on Soil and Water Quality in the Everglades Cultural Area, Florida. Congratulations, Dr. Bai!

🌟 Congratulations to Lily Kile for successfully defending her dissertation last week! Lily's project is titled, "Improving Phosphorus Efficiency in Low and High Input Agricultural Systems,” and was directed by advisor Dr. Luke Gatiboni. Congratulations, Dr. Kile! 🎉

🚨New publication alert! STEPS researchers have published a new paper in Nature Water, "Surface waters in socially vulnerable areas are disproportionately under-monitored for nutrients in the US South Atlantic-Gulf region." Read online at: https://www.nature.com/articles/s44221-025-00460-5.

💬 Got questions about phosphate pollution & how hydrogels can help?
STEPS scholar & lead author of a recent publication, Jiangfeng Xu, has answers!

🔗 https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.langmuir.5c00679

#PhosphateRecovery #HydrogelTech #ScienceQandA #NSFfunded #NSFstories

Congratulations to our Co-Deputy Director, Dr. Paul Westerhoff on receiving the Association of Environmental Engineering & Science Professors Foundation Founder's Award! This award recognizes Paul's significant contributions to environmental engineering education & research. #AEESP

We are sending our best wishes to Dr. Flavia Santos on her next endeavors! Flavia worked as a Post-doc in Dr. Jango Bhadha's lab at University of Florida and brought invaluable experience to the team.
#postdoc #universityofflorida

Congratulations to Alondra Deras and Lucas Crane on earning best poster awards at the Association of Environmental Engineering and Science Professors Conference!

#nsffunded #nsfstories #AEESP2025

Congratulations to Dr. Shwetha Delanthamajalu on a successful dissertation defense & graduation from University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign! In STEPS, Shwetha worked with Dr.Marshall on the Adoption of Innovation project.

#phD #graduation

Postdoctoral fellow, Dr. Yicheng Yang, is working on different phosphorus adsorption media that can be used for advanced treatment technologies out in the field!

💡 P adsorption media are materials designed to capture phosphorus. In adsorption, the P molecules attach to the surface of the media.

Congratulation to our co-deputy director, Dr. Ross Sozzani, on receiving the Outstanding Research Award!

🌱 Ross is a dedicate mentor, brilliant scientist, dynamic speaker, and outstanding leader. We are honored to have her on our team!

🔗 research.ncsu.edu/four-faculty...

#NCState #thinkanddo

@sustainablep.bsky.social recently held their webinar called "Monitoring Phosphorus in the Environment". Our very own, Christopher Oates presented his work during the webinar!
📸 This post is a visual from Christopher's presentation.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhmU...

#phosphorus #waterquality

What are you looking at??

That would be sweetcorn grown using biofertilizers! STEPS researches at University of Florida are growing sweetcorn in controlled setting to explore alternatives to conventional phosphorus fertilizers.

#sustainableagriculture #corn #nsffunded #nsfstories

2 of our scholars attended Science Talk! Science Talks is a conference hosted by the Association of Science Communicators

Dr. Alison Deviney presented a post on her research

Erin Ferrare volunteered with the conference & immersed herself in the conference!

#scitalk25 #asc