An IADC Best Paper Award for a Young Author under the age of 35 was presented to Brianne Cohen at the WEDA XXXI / TAMU 42 Annual Dredging Conference & Exhibition held at the Gaylord Opryland in Nashville, Tennessee, June 5-8 2011.

For several years, the State of Louisiana’s Office of Coastal Protection and Restoration (OCPR) felt that dredging costs were increasing for projects involving the placement of dredged sediment for inland marsh restoration purposes. An international team was assembled to research the issue. In Brianne’s award-winning paper entitled, “Evaluating Alternatives to Improve Dredging Efficiency and Cost-Effectiveness for Inland Marsh Restoration Project,” the team’s data was compiled, conclusions about optimising the dredging component of the current restoration programme were drawn and recommendations were made as to how to do this.