Cal Receives Award from Alma Mater

by George Zamora

(At left: Dr. Mark Cal receives award from Rupert F. Graham, Jr., President of the UIUC Civil & Environmental Engineering Alumni Association.)

SOCORRO, N.M., July 5, 2001 -- Mark P. Cal, an assistant professor of environmental engineering at New Mexico Tech, recently was honored by his alma mater after being named by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) as this year's recipient of its "Young Civil Engineer Achievement Award."

Cal, a native of Rockford, Ill., earned his bachelor of science degree in chemical engineering, master of science degree in environmental engineering, and doctorate degree in environmental engineering at UIUC during the early to mid-1990s.

The Young Civil Engineer Achievement Award is awarded each year to UIUC graduates who have shown exceptional achievements early in their career. Only about 60 total awards have been presented over the years, which represents about 0.1 percent of the total civil and environmental engineering graduates of UIUC.

"The award was given to me for outstanding accomplishments in the field of air quality control, specifically the development of materials for novel gas separation processes, and the development of non-thermal plasmas to destroy hazardous air pollutants," Cal explains.

In previous years, Cal has been the recipient of the R. A. Glenn Best Paper Award from the American Chemical Society's fuel chemistry division and the Outstanding Staff Member Award from the Illinois State Geological Survey.

Cal's current research examines using non-thermal plasmas to destroy hazardous air pollutants, such as benzene, 1, 1, 1- trichloroethane, and methyl ethyl ketone.

Cal lists active memberships in the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, American Chemical Society, Air and Waste Management Association, Association of Environmental Engineering and Science Professors, and Sigma Xi.