1. February 11, 2015
Dear Sir/Madam,
I manage a group of computer modelers who run simulations of the physical, chemical, and
biological processes that occur in the rivers impacted by Philadelphia’s pollution. As a utility
which relies on our local rivers for drinking water, these models are critical to our mission to
protect public health and promote environmental sustainability. We were extremely fortunate
that Saadat Khan served as our co-op intern from September 2014 – February 2015.
Saadat was an extremely bright and talented young engineer who contributed meaningfully to
our group. He was diligent and persistent in all the tasks assigned to him. His strong attention to
detail aided us in quality checking our model input files, and he discovered more than a few
important errors which we then repaired. He completed a number of programming assignments
in both Matlab and R. His work encompassed creating statistical summaries of pollutant
loadings, and automating a time series analysis method that elucidated the groundwater
component of local stream flow. Besides advancing his Matlab and R programming skills,
Saadat also learned ESRI ArcMap software and created several maps of a dye study we
performed.
Saadat has a bright future ahead of him. His warm personality and maturity made him an
enjoyable presence to work with on a daily basis. I highly recommend him for acceptance into
your engineering program.
Please contact me at 215-685-4960 or josef.kardos@phila.gov if you have any questions.
Sincerely,
Josef Kardos, PhD
Manager, Water Quality Compliance Modeling
Office of Watersheds
Philadelphia Water Department
The ARAMARK Tower
1101 Market Street
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19107-2994
Howard M. Neukrug
Commissioner