Dr. Peter Jaffé

Prof. Peter Jaffé joined the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineeing at Princeton University in 1985, and has three concurrent appointments with the Princeton Environmental Institute, the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment and the Princeton Institute for the Science and Technology of Materials. He served as chair of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering from 1999 to 2005 and was director of graduate studies in the same department from 2009 to 2012.

His research interests relate to the physical, chemical, and biological processes that govern the transport and transformation of pollutants in the environment and their application toward the remediation of contaminated systems. Areas of current emphasis include: laboratory and field experiments, as well as mathematical simulations of biogeochemical processes in porous media, such as: (1) understanding the mechanism as well as environmental distribution of the Feammox process (ammonium oxidation under iron reducing conditions); (2) Applications of the Feammox process for ammonium removal in engineered systems and for the cometabolical degradation of recalcitrant organics such as PFAS; (2) biogeochemically mediated dynamics of trace metals, metalloids, and radioisotopes in sediments, wetland soils, and groundwater; (4) nitrogen processing in urban settings coupled to urban hydrology; and (5) design of novel biological waste treatment processes.

Professor Jaffé holds a bachelor’s of science in chemical engineering from Universidad Simón Bolívar in Caracas, Venezuela, and a master’s and doctorate in environmental and water resources engineering from Vanderbilt University.