Mohamed Eltarkawe is a first-year PhD student in Shelly Miller’s group. His research interests are directed toward understanding the relationship between well-being and odors in three communities in Colorado; Fort Lupton, Globeville, and Pueblo. The research is being built upon previous work in which Shelly Miller, Blayne Morgan, Rachel Hansgen and Wendy Hawthorne focused on industrial odors sources and air pollutant concentrations in Globeville, Denver.

Mohamed was born in Karsa, a tiny village in the northeastern part of Libya. After he finished high school, he moved west to Al-Beida city, where he got his bachelors degree in Mechanical Engineering from Omar Al-Mukhtar University. After college graduation, Mohamed started a master degree at the University of Garyounis in Benghazi, Libya. After two semesters, Mohamed was awarded with a full scholarship from Higher Ministry of Education in Libya to pursue a graduate degree in the US. He decided to start over his master in the US. He graduated from the University of Colorado Boulder in 2011. He went back to Libya and taught for two years at the University of Omar Al-Mukhtar. His wife is a teacher and they have a 2-year old son.

Beyond school, Mohamed enjoys family time, camping, soccer, gardening, cooking and above all volunteering. In Karsa, he was part of a group nicknamed “Ragoba” that cleans the water channel in his village. In Boulder, Mohamed enjoys preparing breakfast every other Saturday at the Boulder Homeless Shelter.