Congratulations to our team winning the 1st-place victory in the Wastewater Category in the 22nd Annual VWEA Student Design Competition!

Hi Folks,
 
I am thrilled to share some exciting news from the 2025 Virginia Water Environment Association (VWEA) Student Design Competition held last week! The Effluential Hokies team, representing Virginia Tech, with students from both our Civil and Environmental Engineering, and our Biological Systems Engineering program, claimed a first-place victory in the Wastewater Category with their exceptional project focused on the Chincoteague WWTP Improvements.

Virginia Tech’s Effluential Hokies team made of Cyrus Li, Yitao Li, Zhangtong Liao, Xueyao Zhang, and Mingxi Wang from Dr. Zhiwu Wang’s lab along with Francis Robinson and Will Dawson from Dr. Amy Prudent’s lab. The team was coached by Dr. John Novak.

By earning first place at the state level, the Viriginia Tech team has now earned the honor of representing Virginia at the Water Environment Federation’s (WEF) International Student Design Competition this October in Chicago. This international competition, held during WEFTEC—one of the world’s largest water quality conferences—brings together top student teams from across the globe to showcase their innovative solutions to pressing water challenges.

I wanted to make sure you saw the LinkedIn Post from VWEA Student Design – LinkedIn Post  and were aware of our Hokie winners from the competition.  Here’s a list of our students who are working under Professor Zhiwu Wang and Professor John Novak, who did an excellent job mentoring these students this past semester.

Students that make up the Effluential Hokie’s Wastewater Design Competition Team:
Cyrus Li, Zhangtong Liao, Will Dawson, Xueyao Zhang, Yitao Li, Francis Robinson, and Mingxi Wang

Ms. Elizabeth Merin, Engineer III, EIT, ENV SP in the Wastewater Design and Construction Division, Capital Facilities, DPWES, County of Fairfax.