Mary Schoen, PhD
About
Mary Schoen joined Soller Environmental after completing a post-doctoral research position with the US EPA. While with the EPA, Mary developed risk assessment and sustainability assessment tools for natural and engineered water systems. Her work helped to establish the scientific foundation for the development of new 2012 Draft National Ambient Water Quality Criteria. She was awarded the National Exposure Research Laboratory Special Achievement Award in 2010 for this work.
Dr. Schoen serves as a peer reviewer for Environmental Science & Technology, Water Research, Risk Analysis, Plos One and the US EPA Office of Water and Office of Research & Development. She has been invited as an expert in the area of quantitative microbial risk assessment to multiple meetings and has contributed to many peer reviewed articles.
Education
- PhD, Carnegie Mellon University
Mentorship
Not available to mentor new students.
Research
Research Interests:
Conducting sustainability assessments of engineered water systems including risk, resilience and environmental assessments. Conducting quantitative microbial risk assessment for conventional and alternative drinking and wastewater treatment and reuse options at the community and household levels.
Projects:
Microbial Risk Assessment of Recreational Waters. Conducted high-priority research that underpins the 2012 Draft National Ambient Water Quality Criteria. Developed the stochastic water quality model used to predict pathogen densities and risks in recreational waters for the 2012 Draft National Ambient Water Quality Criteria. Reviewed and analyzed large datasets of scientific data to create probabilistic distributions for the model input parameters. Conducted probabilistic quantitative microbial risk assessment to rank the human health risks associated with ingesting contaminated recreational waters. Released the resulting R computer code to Office of Water for additional studies. Prepared and presented risk-based recommendations to the Office of Water on assessing risk for waters impacted by a mixture of sources as well as animal-impacted waters for the 2012 Recreational Water Quality Regulations.