Zaakiyah Cua, an applied archaeology graduate student, is the winner of an IUP Graduate Student Outstanding Research Award for her thesis, titled "Loyalhanna Creek: A Geoarchaeological Approach to Understanding the Archaeological Potential of Floodplains."
Her thesis research combined geophysics, geomorphology, and sedimentology to identify buried landscapes and archaeological site potential across a selected floodplain associated with the US Army Corps of Engineers - Pittsburgh District Loyalhanna Creek flood control project in Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania.
Zaakiyah, who currently works at the Allegheny National Forest as an archaeologist, recently defended her thesis and will be graduating in spring 2020. This award follows her being the 2018 recipient of the Paul Goldberg Award for geoarchaeological research at the 83rd Society for American Archaeology Conference in Washington, DC.