Alan Berger, an associate professor of urban design and landscape architecture, is planning to use wetlands to clean up the Pontine Marshes, a farming area in the Italian countryside just south of Rome. Decades ago, canals — now heavily polluted — were built to drain the marsh so it could be used for farmland. Berger proposes to replace those straight, polluted canals with a series of winding canals containing plants that will help cleanse the water. He turned to CEE Professor Heidi Nepf, who has done extensive studies of water flow in wetlands, for help testing his designs. The research team included CEE graduate student Jeff Rominger. Read more.