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The Symposium on Biological Methods of Waste Treatment and Management grew out of a Senior Fulbright Research Scholar appointment for Dr. Tharakan at the Department of Biotechnology at The New College, Chennai, India. The project was focused on bioenvironmental remediation research in south India with the overall goal of evaluating and assessing biological pollution control and remediation technologies in research or use in South India. The specific objectives of the project were to (1) document the diverse array of biologically based waste treatment technologies and management strategies that were already in use in South India; (2)evaluate the success of those biologically based technologies that had been implemented and were accessible to observation and review; and (3)attempt to document and characterize novel biologically based treatment technologies being researched, developed and implemented.

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John Tharakan is Professor of Chemical Engineering at Howard University in Washington, DC, USA. He received his BS in chemical engineering from IIT Madras,India, and the MS and PhD in Engineering Science and Biochemical Engineering, respectively, from UCSD,California, USA; he also served as Senior Fulbright Scholar in India from 2006 to 2007.

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