Information School Ph.D. student Luke Rodriguez was part of a team that recently won an R&D 100 Award, known as the “Oscars of Invention.”

Rodriguez, a first-year student in the iSchool doctoral program, worked on the winning project while on staff at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Washington. He was the lead developer on the Designs for Risk Evaluation and Modeling (DREAM) project, a software tool that helps researchers design monitoring configurations to quickly identify leaks at carbon storage sites.

DREAM was included in a larger kit called the National Risk Assessment Partnership Toolset, which won the award. The toolset included a suite of models that assess geological integrity and environmental risk of carbon dioxide storage sites. The tools will support industry and regulators as they design and implement carbon storage projects.

The R&D 100 Awards recognize 100 of the brightest and boldest technologies and services of the year across nine categories. A full list of the 2017 winners is available at the R&D 100 Conference website.