Rachel G. Adams

Dr. Adams teaches classes in aquatic chemistry, water and wastewater treatment, inland waters, environmental systems (laboratory class), and analytical methods. Before her graduate studies, Dr. Adams worked on several air and water quality projects as an environmental engineer for Radian International. After finishing her Ph.D., she was a Knauss Sea Grant Marine Policy Fellow at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. While there, she worked on improving methods for the evaluation of dredged material proposed for ocean and inland disposal. Dr. Adams’ research focuses on the cycling of organic pollutants like polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in natural waters. She has developed a sampler for measuring dissolved pollutants, which she most recently used to study the importance of sediment resuspension on the transport of PAHs and PCBs in the lower Hudson Estuary.
Dr. Adams graduated with a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Michigan in 1994, an M.S. in Civil and Environmental Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2000 and received her Ph.D. in Civil and Environmental Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2002.