RESEARCH INTERESTS:

Dr. Schulze-Makuch joined our faculty in September, 1998. He is a Ph.D. graduate from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and received both the M.S. and B.S. in Geology from Justus-Liebig University in Giessen, Germany. Dirk's expertise are in the areas of contaminant and bacterial transport in the subsurface, remediation methods for contaminated groundwater and soils (including bioremediation), physical and chemical hydrogeology, environmental geophysics, ground-water modeling, field methods in hydrology and environmental science, geobiology, and astrobiology.
Dr. Schulze-Makuch's prior employment was at a Princeton-based research and consulting firm. He worked as Senior Project Hydrogeologist in the Wisconsin Branch Office where his major tasks were to investigate and coordinate the remediation of hydrocarbon spills in the subsurface.
Dirk was appointed Adjunct Professor at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse in November 1997 and taught a lecture in Environmental Risk Assessment and Natural Attenuation Processes in addition to his consulting job. Some other projects Dr. Schulze-Makuch worked on prior to his Ph.D. were the delineation of agricultural and industrial contaminants in the Lahn River (a tributary of the Rhine River), the interaction between surface water and ground water (Milwaukee River/Dolomite Aquifer of SE Wisconsin), the effects of a paper factory on water quality and quantity, the exploration of thermal and mineral water, and the location of ancient landfills and archaeological sites in Germany.
Dr. Schulze-Makuch's current projects include the microbial characterization of ground-water flow systems; characterization of heterogeneities in the subsurface; virus transport in the subsurface and in wetlands; physical, chemical and microbiological characterization of salt playas and geothermal areas; exploration of geothermal areas using remote sensing; investigation of alternative energy sources that may support life on other planetary bodies of our solar system; and a characterization of extreme environments (including various planets and moons of our Solar System) with regard to their suitability for life.
He is also an active member of the Europa Focus Group and the Titan Focus Group of the NASA Astrobiology Institute investigating the possibility of primitive life forms in the Europan ocean and on Titan. Teaching Areas: Chemical Hydrogeology, Physical Hydrogeology, Environmental Risk Assessment, Environmental Geology & Geophysics, Ground-Water Contamination and Remediation, Geohydrobiology, Astrobiology

Dr. Schulze-Makuch is also Chief Scientist of the GeoBiological Groundwater Research Group ( GBiG ) and established the Life-in-the Solar-System Discussion Group (former Titan Study Group).

• Tanya Lehner (Geol., M.S.)
• Benjamin Diaz (MSIS, M.S.)

• Pedro Muela (Ph.D., Geol.)
• Habbes Ghrefat (Ph.D.ESE)
• Wousef Nasir (Ph.D., ESE)
• Robert Rice (Ph.D., ESE)
• Olamide Ladeji (Ph.D., Geol.)
• Hugo Gutierrez (M.S., MSIS)
• Miguel Dominguez (M.S., Geol.)
• Adriana Perez (M.S., Geol.)
• Kadambari Redi (M.S. Civil Eng.)
• Margaret Lucero (M.S.,Biol.)
• Wendy McElroy (M.S., Biol.)

• Ousama Abbas (ESE, Ph.D.)
• John Kennedy (Geol., Ph.D.)
• Ahmal Abdel-Fattah (ESE, Ph.D.)
• Elia Benitez-Marquez (ESE, Ph.D.)
• Emile Couroux (Geol., Ph.D.)
• Wayne Belzer (Geol., Ph.D.)

• Project Director: Exploration of Geothermal Discharge Areas Using Remote Sensing and Hydrogeological Methods. NASA.
• Co- PI: Riverbank Filtration Effectiveness in an Arid Environment (EPA)
• Project Director: Zeolite-Based Filters and their Potential to Remove Giardia and Cryptosporidium from Drinking Water (EPA-SCERP)
• Co-PI: Control of Cryptosporidium and Giardia Species in Drinking Water Using Surfactant Modified Zeolite (WERC)
• Co-PI: Small-scale Spatial Occurrence Trends of Arsenic in Ground-Water Resources of the Paso del Norte Region (EPA-SCERP)
• Co-PI: Novel Nanocomposite Photocatalyst for Water Treatment (NIH)

• Schulze-Makuch, D., Guan, H., and Pillai, S.D. (2003) Effects of pH and geological medium on bacteriophage MS2 transport in a model aquifer. Geomicrobiology Journal, vol. 20, no. 1, p. 73-84.
• Guan, H., Schulze-Makuch, D., Schaffer, S., and Pillai, S.D. (2003) The effect of critical pH on virus fate and transport in a saturated porous medium. Ground Water, vol. 41, no. 5, p. 701-708.
• Rzonca, B. and Schulze-Makuch, D. (2003) Correlation between microbial and chemical parameters of some hydrothermal springs in New Mexico, USA. Journal of Hydrology, vol. 280, p. 272-284.
• Schulze-Makuch, D., Goodell, P., Kretzschmar, T.G., and Kennedy, J.F. (2003) Microbial and chemical characterization of a ground-water flow system in an intermontane basin of southern New Mexico. Hydrogeology Journal, vol. 11, p. 401-412.
• Rzonca, B. and Schulze-Makuch, D. (2003) Badania wod geotermalnych w obrebie ryftu Rio Grande (Nowy Meksyk, USA) (Investigation of Geothermal Spring Waters within the Rio Grande Rift, New Mexico, USA). Wspolczesne problemy hydrogeologii (Contemporary Problems of Hydrogeology), vol. 11, p. 433-438.
• Schulze-Makuch, D., Irwin, L.N., and Guan, H. (2002) Search parameters for the remote detection of extraterrestrial life. Planetary and Space Sciences, vol. 50, p. 675-683, and selected for special publication in Virtual Journal of Geobiology, vol. 1, no. 2, October 2002.
• Schulze-Makuch, D. and Irwin, L.N. (2002) Reassessing the possibility of life on Venus: Proposal for an Astrobiology Mission. Astrobiology, vol 2, no 2, p. 197-202.
• Schulze-Makuch, D., Pillai, S.D., Guan, H., Bowman, R., Couroux, E., Hielscher, F., Emmert, S., Totten, J., Espinosa, I.Y., and Kretzschmar, T. (2002) Surfactant modified zeolite can protect drinking water wells from viruses and bacteria. EOS, Transactions American Geophysical Union, feature article, vol. 83., no. 18, p. 193 & 200-201.
• Schulze-Makuch, D., Guan, H., Irwin, L.N., and Vega, E. (2002) Redefining life: An ecological, thermodynamic, and bioinformatic approach. In Fundamentals of Life, Elsevier Publ., p. 41-51.
• Schulze-Makuch, D. (2002) At the cross-roads between microbiology and planetology: a proposed iron redox cycle that could sustain life in an ocean - and the ocean need not be on Earth. American Society of Microbiology (ASM) News, vol. 68, no. 8, p. 364-365.
• Schulze-Makuch, D. (2002) Evidence for the discharge of hydrothermal water into Lake Lucero, White Sands National Monument, Southern New Mexico. New Mexico Geological Society Guidebook, 53rd Field Conference, Geology of White Sands, p. 325-329.
• Schulze-Makuch, D., Irwin, L.N. and Irwin, T. (2002) Astrobiological relevance and feasibility of a sample collection mission to the atmosphere of Venus. ESA Special Publication SP-518, p. 247-252.
• Abbas, O. and Schulze-Makuch, D. (2002) Acetylene-based pathways for prebiotic evolution on Titan. ESA Special Publication SP-518, p. 345-348.
• Irwin, L.N. and Schulze-Makuch, D. (2002) Origin and evolution of life on other worlds: lessons from the history of life on Earth. ESA Special Publication SP-518, p. 463-464.
• Rzonca, B and Schulze-Makuch, D. (2002) Investigation of hydrothermal sources in the Rio Grande Rift region. New Mexico Geological Society Guidebook, 53rd Field Conference, Geology of White Sands, p. 319-324.
• Schulze-Makuch, D. and Irwin, L.N. (2002) Energy cycling and hypothetical organisms in Europa's ocean. Astrobiology, vol. 2, no. 1, p. 105-121.
• Irwin, L.N. and Schulze-Makuch, D. (2001) Assessing the plausibility of life on other worlds. Astrobiology, vol. 1, no. 2, p. 143-160.
• Schulze-Makuch, D. (2001): Identification and characterization of regional ground-water flow systems using remote sensing and microbial methods. In New Approaches Characterizing Groundwater Flow (K.P. Seiler and S. Wohnlich (eds.), Balkema Publ., p. 1281-1285.
• Barud-Zubillaga, A. and Schulze-Makuch, D. (2001): Characterization of an arid groundwater flow system using satellite imagery. In New Approaches Characterizing Groundwater Flow (K.P. Seiler and S. Wohnlich (eds.), Balkema Publ., p. 1129-1133.
• Schulze-Makuch, D. and Irwin, L.N. (2001): Alternative energy sources could support life on Europa. EOS, Transactions American Geophysical Union, vol. 82, no. 13, p. 150.
• Kretzschmar, T.G. and Schulze-Makuch, D. (2001) Hydrochemical development of ground waters in the Tularosa Basin of Southern New Mexico, USA. In Water Rock Interactions, R. Cidu (ed.), WRI vol. 10, p. 545-548.
• Barud-Zubillaga, A. and Schulze-Makuch, D. (2001) Supervised classification of an arid ground-water flow system. Conference Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Environmental and Engineering Geophysical Society, Denver, Colorado, March 4-7, 2001.
• Schulze-Makuch, D. and Kennedy, J.F. (2000) Microbiological and chemical characterization of geothermal fluids at the Tortugas Mountain Geothermal Area, southern New Mexico, USA. Hydrogeology Journal, vol. 8, p. 295-309.
• Schulze-Makuch, D. and Kennedy, J.F. (2000) Microbiological and chemical characterization of geothermal ground water at three sites in the desert southwest of North America. In Bioastronomy'99 - A New Era in Bioastronomy, Proceedings of a Conference held on the Kohala Coast, Hawaii, 2-6 Aug. 1999, ASP Conference Series 213, p. 391-396.
• Schulze-Makuch, D. and Haddad, P. (2000) Investigation of water resources in arid climate using radar. In Groundwater: Past Achievements and Future Challenges, O. Sililo et al. (eds) Balkema Publ., p. 303-306.
• Schulze-Makuch, D. and Malik, P. (1999) The scaling of hydraulic properties in granitic rocks. In Hydrogeology of Crystalline Rocks (editors: I. Stober and K. Bucher). Kluwer academic publishers, Dordrecht, The Netherlands, p. 127- 138.
• Schulze-Makuch, D., Carlson, D.A., Cherkauer, D.S. and Malik, P. (1999) Scale dependency of hydraulic conductivity in heterogeneous media. Ground Water, vol. 37, no. 6, p. 904-919.
• Schulze-Makuch, D. (1998) Remediation of hydrocarbons by using an integrated approach of risk assessment and in-situ microbial methods. IAHS Publ. No. 250, p. 292-295.
• Schulze-Makuch, D. and Cherkauer, D.S. (1998) Variations in hydraulic conductivity with scale of measurement during aquifer tests in heterogeneous, porous carbonate rocks: Hydrogeology Journal, vol. 6, no. 2, p. 204-215.