Research Focus

With diminishing water resources and global water use skyrocketing, the provision of clean water has been identified as one of the grand challenges of the 21st century by the National Academy of Engineering. Our research interest lies in addressing critical urban water challenges—from protecting drinking water supplies against wildfire-derived contaminants to enabling stormwater reuse as a sustainable water source through innovative treatment technologies for emerging contaminant removal—while fostering interdisciplinary collaborations that bridge fundamental research with practical solutions for water-scarce communities. The core of our research program builds on aquatic chemistry, analytical chemistry, and material engineering, which extends to address key challenges in three main areas: (1) novel approaches to control emerging contaminants, (2) environmental monitoring and sensing, and (3) toxicity studies to understand the toxicity drivers in engineering processes.