Margaret Mallonee is a senior majoring in Economics and Chinese. Her project evaluates the South-North Water Transfer Project (SNWTP), the world's largest water diversion project. Policy-makers world-wide argue that the SNWTP's costs exceed its benefits because it is only short-term solution for China's long-term water scarcity problem and does not solve the difficulty of high water demand for a limited freshwater supply. To test this theory, this project runs a cost-benefit analysis on the SNWTP's central route's costs and benefits to Beijing.

The university faculty members on this committee are Dr. Thomas Rawski, Dr. James Cook, and Dr. Paul Noroski. The external examiner for this defense is Dr. Jennifer Turner, Director of the China Environment Forum at the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars.