Brian Fontenot

I graduated with a Ph.D. in Quantitative Biology in 2009 from the University of Texas at Arlington. From 2009 to 2010 I worked as an NIH-funded postdoctoral fellow for Indiana University and the University of Texas at Arlington working on microarray and genomic analyses of the Red Flour Beetle. I continue to work with the Departments of Biology and Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of Texas at Arlington as an affiliated researcher. I currently work for the Environmental Protection Agency in the nonpoint source pollution program where I serve as a technical advisor to the states of Arkansas and New Mexico, helping them administer their state nonpoint source pollution control programs. My past research has focused on speciation and hybridization in toads and genomics in beetles, but I received an opportunity to join a dynamic team of researchers in order to evaluate water quality in areas of natural gas extraction in the Barnett Shale formation of Texas. In my capacity as an affiliated researcher with the University of Texas at Arlington, I played a role in carrying out a study of private well water quality in the Barnett Shale that was recently published in the journal Environmental Science and Technology. My colleagues and I have found this work to be immensely rewarding, but also rife with questions that need to be answered. To begin to answer these questions, we have embarked on a study of the Cline Shale in the Permian Basin region of Texas. This study will enable us to examine groundwater quality in private wells sampled before, during, and after natural gas extraction activities take place providing a time series analysis that will ultimately provide valuable information on whether or not natural gas extraction impacts shallow groundwater. We greatly appreciate your interest and hope that you'll be able to play a role in helping us finish this important research!

August 2013