Sansiñena Wins NMSBA Principal Investigator Excellence Award
Josemari Sansiñena Wins NMSBA Principal Investigator Excellence Award
On April 5, 2022, the Richard P. Feynman Center for Innovation (FCI) and the New Mexico Small Business Assistance program (NMSBA) awarded Josemari Sansiñena of C-CDE the Principal Investigator Excellence (PIE) Award for his outstanding assistance to the small businesses of New Mexico. During the last five years, Josemari has served as the primary Principal Investigator on seven NMSBA projects. In all these projects, Josemari completed all tasks and deliverables on time, and communicated regularly with the companies, as well as the project manager, to ensure all work was of high quality and relevant to business needs.
One of these NMSBA projects focused on the evaluation of a New Mexico company’s proprietary zeolite formulations for removal of a prevalent chemical contaminant in surface, industrial, and agricultural waters in the presence of wide-ranging calcium concentrations. The results obtained in this project substantially increased the value of the company by expanding the capability of their zeolite products for multiple environmental remediation challenges and opportunities for improvement.
In another NMSBA project, Josemari assisted a New Mexico company in evaluation of the effectiveness of several proprietary natural and synthetic zeolites for the removal of trace metals from water in the presence of additional metal contamination. The results of this work proved that company products are useful in the cleanup of radioactive contaminants in water produced by nuclear plants, or heavy metal removal in groundwater. Some of these zeolite products have already been used in the cleanup of radioactive contaminants at the nuclear reactor meltdown site at Fukushima, Japan, and the cleanup of groundwater contaminated with uranium at the Homestake Uranium Mill cleanup near Grants, NM. The products have also been incorporated into a number of active and passive mine effluent treatment systems across New Mexico.
