04/21/2026
Last week we sent 6 teams (27 students) to the 36th WERC Environmental Design Contest in Las Cruces, NM. This is LSU’s 30th entry into the contest dating back to 1995.
Our teams won 3 of the 6 tasks and 8 total trophies competing against Washington University-St Louis, University of Pennsylvania, University of Idaho, California Polytechnic-San Luis Obispo, Michigan Tech, New Mexico State and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, among others. Teams submitted a written paper, made an oral presentation, a short business-focused Flash talk, made a poster presentation and bench-scale presentation to practitioner judges from across the southwest.
Task winners were:
Task 3 Bioinspired Critical Mineral Recovery (sponsored by Freeport-McMoran)—these students designed a composite sodium alginate bead containing biochar and Gracilaria gracilis, a red algae with specific sorptive capacity for rare earth elements Yttrium and Lanthanum. This team was the only team to recover these elements from the Freeport raffinate waste stream.
Task 4 (Survive the Night Logistical Challenge (sponsored by NASA)—these students designed a new cargo container for the Artemis mission that could withstand the extreme cold of the dark lunar poles. This team beat 5 other teams including chemical engineering teams from Idaho and Ohio University in this task.
Task 6 (Open source Environmental Monitor) (sponsored by Sinclair). These students designed a we bulb globe temperature monitor to help mitigate heat stress from urban heat islands, They designed the monitor and the dashboard logging system using AI, producing a fully functional sensor network in collaboration with St Mary’s catholic schooling NOLA, one of the oldest black Catholic schools in the US. The judges rewarded this all girl team (self-dubbed the Geaux Girl Group) with 4 total trophies— including best bench scale, 3rd in the flash talk and a peer award from the other student teams, the first LSU team to win 4 trophies in one WERC competition.
Other winners include a first place bench scale for advanced tech for Team 7B who designed a passive system for measuring Vibrio in coastal waters. This team also finished 2nd in the flash pitch competition. The Task 5 (sponsored by Chevron and NGL) team won a special recognition award from the judges for their surfactant based evaporation strategy for Task 5.
Pictured below is our top team Task 6 GGG
