Course 1 graduate student Jennifer Apell was selected as one of the 2015 winners of the American Chemical Society’s (ACS) C. Ellen Gonter Environmental Chemistry Award – an award presented to graduate students at U.S. and international universities who submit the highest quality research papers. Apell secured the award for her work deploying passive samplers in situ in the sediment bed of a contaminated lake in Natick, MA. She and her team brought sediment samples to an MIT lab, and discovered that the passive samplers consistently revealed higher pore water concentrations of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). Her ACS lecture explained her efforts to determine why there is a difference between passive samplers deployed in situ (in the lake) versus ex situ (in the laboratory). Apell was formally presented the award on August 18 during an ACS ceremonial dinner. For more information, please see here.