Olivia Stellpflug says she accidentally specialized in water. She graduated from UW-Stevens Point in May 2025 with a degree in chemical engineering. She chose her major because she was interested in plastics pollution and wanted to make products with fewer environmental effects, but undergraduate research experiences piqued her interest in water issues.
Conducting PFAS research with two Freshwater Collaborative–funded faculty members led Stellfplug to add a minor in waste resources to further study water. She is now employed by Fehr Graham Engineering and Environmental. She splits her time between the environmental remediation group and the drinking water group.
“Having PFAS research on my resume was a good foundation,” Stellpflug says. “It taught me a lot more about PFAS than most people know. It’s such a hot topic right now.”
Called “forever chemicals” because of their persistence in the environment, PFAS have been linked to cancer, liver damage, and thyroid disease.
Stellpflug worked on two PFAS projects as an undergraduate. In Joseph Mondloch’s lab, she helped develop and test compounds that use metal-organic framework technology to determine how well they adsorb PFAS from water. With Seyed Javad Amirfakhri, she tested activated charcoal sourced from various renewable materials to determine which is most effective in adsorbing PFAS from water.
She enjoyed putting together the samples in the labs but says the most beneficial skills she learned were soft skills needed for working in teams and data analysis.
“Dr. Mondloch’s date analysis was much more detailed than what I’ve done on the job so far!” she says. “We do a lot of groundwater testing, so it’s less complex but incredibly important for property owners, remediation, and water operators.”
She presented her research many times, including at Research in the Rotunda at the Wisconsin Capitol Building. She also co-authored a paper that was recently published in Chemosphere, a prestigious peer-reviewed journal in environmental engineering. All these experiences led her to a job in water.
“I didn’t go into my major thinking about water,” she says. “Having these undergraduate experiences helped me figure out what I wanted to do.”
And they prepared her well for her first professional job. She credits her hands-on experiences for enabling her to quickly jump into the water design team at Fehr. She’s on a team that has worked with municipalities in Iowa to study their water system, design a water facility, and more.
“My project manager was willing to bring me into a big project right away without me having to wait to get up to speed because of the foundational knowledge from UW-Stevens Point and research,” she says.