About PRIMA Environmental, Inc. Knowing the concentration of the chemicals of concern (COCs) in soil and groundwater is not always enough to determine the most cost-effective approach of managing the environmental issues at a site. Additional site-specific information, such as the effectiveness of different treatment options and the bioavailability of the COCs, is often needed to the ensure the success of the project. PRIMA Environmental, Inc., a woman-owned small business enterpise, is an independent laboratory that specializes in treatability testing, technology evaluation, custom laboratory work and scientific consulting services for the environmental community. Established in 1998 by Dr. Cindy Schreier, its purpose is to design and conduct bench-scale laboratory tests that will provide the additional information needed to make cost-effective decisions about the environmental issues at a site. PRIMA can perform bench-scale testing on soil and water impacted by a wide variety of compounds, including chlorinated solvents, petroleum hydrocarbons, pesticides, arsenic, metals and nitrate. Impacted materials have come from sites utilized by the mining, petroleum, railroad, chemical, dry-cleaning, and semiconductor industries as well as by the United States government.

KEY PERSONNEL Cindy G. Schreier, Ph.D. Dr. Schreier is a graduate of Stanford University, receiving her doctorate from the Department of Civil Engineering in 1996 for her work investigating zero-valent iron and palladium/hydrogen for the destruction of chlorinated solvents. Two years later, she founded PRIMA Environmental and is PRIMA's President and Chief Scientist. Dr. Schreier has broad knowledge of both organic and inorganic contaminants as well as many remediation technologies including permanganate, ozone, Fenton’s Reagent, persulfate, zero-valent iron, and in situ stabilization of hexavalent chromium. She has designed, conducted, and evaluated numerous treatability studies to evaluate the effectiveness of these and other technologies and to assess the effect of treatment on secondary parameters. Dr. Schreier has prepared technical reports, presented results at scientific meetings, and written scientific articles that have been published in peer-reviewed journals. Dr. Schreier has had a long-standing interest in cleaning up the environment. As a freshman in high school, she wanted to get rid of the smog in Los Angeles. In her application essays for college, she wrote about finding inexpensive ways to clean up the environment, so that cleaning up would be less expensive than litigation. At Stanford, she changed her graduate major from Chemistry to Civil Engineering because of the focus of the Civil Engineering department on remediation and clean water. In addition to her Ph.D., Dr. Schreier earned her M.S. in chemistry from Stanford and her B.S. in chemistry from the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC), graduating from UCSC with highest honors. Corinne E. Ackerman, Ph.D. Dr. Ackerman joined PRIMA Environmental, Inc. in the spring of 2008. Her background and experience in microbial ecology compliment and expand the bioremediation testing services currently offered by PRIMA. Dr. Ackerman has over 10 years of experience working with environmental issues impacting soil and water quality, including the study of MTBE bioremediation. Dr. Ackerman earned her B.S. in Environmental Resource Science from the University of California, Davis, and both her M.S. and Ph.D. in Agronomy from Purdue University, studying the microbial ecology of soil agroecosystems. Her graduate studies implemented a variety of DNA based molecular tools in order to better understand the relationship between the rhizosphere soil microbial community and plant development over time, as affected by crop management practice. Dr. Ackerman's knowledge and expertise regarding soil microbial dynamics have contributed to PRIMA's bioremediation testing capabilities.   Copyright © PRIMA Environmental, Inc. 2003 - 2011