Federick Pinongcos

Featured on November 26, 2023

Joining us this week is Federick “Fed” Pinongcos, an engineer at Trussell Technologies in San Diego, USA.

Fed graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Environmental Engineering from San Diego State University, as well as a Master of Science in Civil and Environmental Engineering from the same institution. His Masters thesis explored anthropogenic pollutants during storm events in urban Mediterranean waterways.

Before his current role, Fed worked as a stormwater monitoring field technician at the San Diego Coastkeeper; as a research assistant and later, laboratory manager at the San Diego State University Water Innovation and Reuse Lab and as a Fulbright Research Fellow investigating phytoremediation in Trinidad and Tobago, among other positions.

Here are a few fun facts about Fed:

• He has worked with various types of water media, including rainwater, stormwater, groundwater, surface water (e.g., sea water, river water, etc.), wastewater, and processed water (this includes both sustainable treatment methods (such as phytoremediation) and advanced treatment technologies (Reverse Osmosis and Advanced Oxidation Process)!
• He used to work as a “rain chaser” for an NGO in San Diego, Ca. (SD doesn’t really get many storm events, hence rain chaser and not storm chaser).
• His hobbies include traveling, playing video games (currently playing Overwatch 2), blogging (currently writing about his Fulbright adventures at his website and he recently got into Sudoku!

Let’s all welcome Fed to the Pinoy Scientists fam!