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From Self-Reflection to a Research Path

After completing her bachelor’s degree in Illinois Tech in Chicago and returning home to Malaysia, Nazia Aslam began thinking seriously about what she wanted for her future. Although she had always been interested in science, pursuing a PhD was not something she had previously considered or seen people around her do.

“I started asking myself what kind of life I truly wanted, not just what was available to me, but what I could build for myself,” Nazia said. “I realized that I wanted to do meaningful work, to challenge myself, and to create opportunities that didn’t yet exist in my world.”

That realization led her back to the United States, where she is now a fourth-year Chemical Engineering PhD student at the University of Connecticut. As the first person in her family to pursue this path, Nazia describes the decision as both difficult and transformative.

Process Intensification of Water-Treatment Systems

Today, her research bridges chemical engineering, machine learning, and water treatment systems. Her work focuses on developing interpretable and efficient models that can uncover governing physics and improve the design and operation of complex dynamic processes.

At the beginning of her PhD, Nazia worked on comparative studies involving physics-informed neural networks and symbolic regression to identify governing partial differential equations from sparse and noisy data. Her work was presented at venues including a Data-Driven Physical Simulations seminar at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, a CRUNCH group webinar at Brown University, and the 2023 INFORMS Annual Meeting.

She later contributed to two projects funded by the National Alliance for Water Innovation. One project focused on modeling and simulating high-concentration brine desalination systems using open-source Python-based tools including Pyomo, WaterTAP, and IDAES. Her work demonstrated how the incorporation of more accurate thermodynamic models, which improved predictions of thermodynamic properties, reduced the estimated specific energy consumption of thermal desalination systems by more than 17% compared to conventional methods.

Infographic showing a five-step workflow for improving thermal desalination efficiency using high-accuracy thermodynamic models and process optimization. Step 1 highlights improved thermodynamic property models that reduce uncertainty in energy consumption estimates. Step 2 shows system modeling and simulation of a solar-powered triple-effect distillation desalination system with an absorption heat pump, including a detailed process flow diagram. Step 3 focuses on process optimization using thermodynamic constraints, mass and energy balances, and decision variables such as temperatures, heat duties, and flow rates. Step 4 presents the impact, showing a greater than 17% reduction in specific energy consumption when using refined models compared to conventional models. Step 5 illustrates a continuous improvement cycle of defining targets, simulating, analyzing results, and refining models. — Workflow for advancing a separation system of high brine concentration through refined thermodynamics and process intensification. Illustration by Nazia Aslam.

Innovations in Water Treatment and Future Directions

Desalination plays an increasingly important role in addressing global water scarcity, but many processes are highly energy-intensive and involve complex brine chemistries that are difficult to model accurately. In addition to conducting the research, Nazia also developed reusable software packages and documentation that were made accessible to the broader research community through WaterTAP’s open-source GitHub repository.

More recently, she has been developing interpretable models for long-term membrane fouling prediction using ultrafiltration system data. Membrane fouling remains one of the largest operational challenges in membrane-based water treatment due to its dynamic and multifactorial nature. Nazia’s work aims to improve system management and reduce operational costs by creating models that can better predict fouling trends across operational cycles.

Her current research focus explores large language model-based approaches for discovering governing physics in complex systems.

Because her work spans multiple disciplines, adapting to the pace and breadth of the field has been one of the biggest challenges of her PhD journey.

“Coming from an experimental and industrial background, moving into work that involves coding, modeling, and artificial intelligence felt overwhelming at first,” she said. “I found myself learning new tools and ways of thinking while simultaneously tackling new research challenges.”

Despite these hurdles, she sees the interdisciplinary nature of the field as one of its most rewarding aspects. Her work has the potential to benefit researchers, engineers, industry professionals, and policymakers working to improve the efficiency and sustainability of water treatment systems.

Looking ahead, she hopes to continue pursuing research that addresses real-world challenges while also contributing to expanding educational opportunities in developing communities.

“I believe education empowers individuals to create better opportunities for themselves,” she said.

In addition to her research, Nazia recently became the programming director of the NAWI Next Generation Leadership Council, where she helps lead initiatives that connect students, researchers, and industry professionals through events such as technical webinars. After graduation, she hopes to pursue a research-focused role in either national laboratories or industry.

Nazia’s journey reflects both personal determination and a willingness to step into unfamiliar spaces. What began as a decision to challenge herself has evolved into a career dedicated to solving complex problems and building tools that can make a lasting impact.

NAWI has funded a number of pilot projects that are intended to demonstrate the scaling of new technologies from bench scale or laboratory prototypes to large—and often mobile—field-deployed systems on relevant waters at or near their source. One such pilot project, led by Purdue University, is looking at batch reverse osmosis (BRO).

BRO has been proposed as a more energy-efficient alternative to conventional reverse osmosis (RO), primarily due to the former’s ability to operate closer to the brine’s osmotic pressure during permeate production. In this work, David Warsinger and his team designed, constructed, and tested a pilot-scale conventional RO, closed-circuit RO (CCRO), double-acting reciprocating piston BRO, and bladder-based BRO configurations within the combined system. By using the same pilot system across all tests, the influence of variables such as feed water composition, membrane type, piping, and pump selection is minimized. The pilot system is fully operational and can automatically run using a LabView VI.

The system is designed to handle high-salinity water and is comprised of several components (e.g., check valves, 3-way valves, and 2-way valves). A 5-micron cartridge filter was installed to protect the RO membrane and remove small particles. A feed tank provides the necessary feed water to the system, while separate tanks are used to store the brine and permeate flows. Additionally, different sensors and transducers are used to monitor the main operational variables in the system such as flow rates, pressure, conductivity, pH and temperature.

Experimental results obtained with the pilot system were used to parameterize and validate a predictive model. This model discretizes the membrane module’s feed channel in both the axial and transverse directions to capture the effects of concentration polarization and pressure losses on system performance. By simulating the pressure evolution over time, this model can calculate the system’s specific energy consumption (SEC).

The system has operated continuously for over 900 hours, with seamless switching between configurations. To date, more than 800 million data points have been collected.

The pilot has been operated with different feed salinities (brackish and seawater) and a range of water fluxes and recovery ratios. Preliminary results support previous predictions, showing that CCRO and Batch RO outperform Conventional RO in energy efficiency and achievable recovery.

The results also show that the selected performance indicators are being met with minimal to no leaks observed at operating pressures of up to 1000 psi. Both SEC and the recovery ratio remained within 5% of initial values throughout testing, even after consecutive operating cycles.

For more information, access the project research brief.

When David Warsinger talks about water, it’s never just about water.

It’s about thermodynamics, membranes, microbes, minerals, agriculture, geopolitics — and the quiet urgency of building systems that actually work in the real world.

Now a faculty member at Purdue University, David’s path to leading one of NAWI’s most ambitious desalination pilot projects began years earlier in an MIT conference room, crowded around a whiteboard with . What started as a “side project” during his PhD has since evolved into patented technology, multiple partnerships with startups, international research momentum — and, most recently, NAWI support to build the largest true-batch seawater reverse osmosis (RO) system ever developed.

Rethinking Desalination at Its Core

Conventional reverse osmosis desalination operates continuously: water flows in, pressure stays high, and energy is often wasted by overpressurizing the system. David and his collaborators questioned a foundational assumption — what if desalination didn’t have to be continuous at all?

Instead, they explored batch and semi-batch reverse osmosis, where pressure changes dynamically over time to closely follow the minimum pressure required to desalinate water. This subtle shift turns out to matter a lot.

But there was a catch. A true batch system requires precise, simultaneous control of both pressure and volume — something that hadn’t been solved before at scale. Through persistent whiteboard brainstorming and years of iteration, David and cracked the problem, leading to patented configurations that laid the groundwork for today’s pilot systems.

NAWI Support Enables a First-of-Its-Kind Pilot

With support from NAWI, David’s team at Purdue, Colorado School of Mines, and Oak Ridge National Lab set out to do something bold: build the largest true-batch RO pilot system in the world.

Housed on a 25-foot trailer and operating up to 40–50 gallons per minute , the system is anything but small. The membrane vessels are roughly 10 feet long, the valves are “about the size of a person’s head,” and the main pump and motor weigh nearly 180 pounds. What began as a proposal for a 10-gallon-per-minute system grew — with NAWI’s encouragement and additional resources from collaborator Tzahi Cath’s Department of Defense project — into a five-times-larger, fully modular pilot platform.

The system is designed to compare multiple desalination modes side-by-side: continuous RO, semi-batch RO, true batch RO, and other emerging configurations. It can test seawater, brackish water, high-salinity brines, and even difficult industrial and agricultural wastewaters — making it a flexible testbed for next-generation water treatment.

Beyond Energy: Scaling, and Recovery

Energy efficiency is only part of the story.

Because batch RO cycles salinity up and down every few minutes, it naturally disrupts biofilm formation, a major cause of membrane failure in conventional systems. The rapid salinity changes can cause microbial cells to swell and burst — a phenomenon David’s team has been studying in detail.

Batch operation also opens the door to higher water recovery. Traditional desalination systems avoid operating near salt saturation to prevent scaling and crystallization, which can permanently foul membranes. But batch RO can safely pass through supersaturated conditions for short periods, allowing operators to extract more water from the same feed — an especially valuable advantage for brines, groundwater, and mineral-rich streams.

Applications: Who Benefits First?

While municipal utilities tend to be slow adopters of new technology, David sees near-term impact in industry — particularly sectors that already handle difficult waters.

Critical minerals like lithium and iodine often come from salty brines that are currently concentrated using massive evaporation ponds. Batch RO could dramatically reduce land use, energy demand, and environmental impact in these processes. Agricultural wastewater, industrial reuse, and high-recovery treatment for PFAS and other emerging contaminants are also strong candidates.

Some of this impact is already happening. Variations of David’s batch-inspired designs have been adopted by startups treating animal wastewaters and agricultural flows — with systems now operating at over one million gallons per day.

Scaling Science in a Challenging Funding Landscape

Building hardware-intensive systems on accelerated timelines isn’t easy — especially in today’s uncertain research funding environment. David is candid about the challenges: short pilot timelines, the difficulty of sustaining graduate student support, and the broader consequences of delayed or canceled federal funding.

Yet the urgency only reinforces the stakes.

Water security, critical minerals, agricultural resilience, and energy efficiency are deeply interconnected. Technologies that improve desalination efficiency and recovery don’t just make water cheaper — they help secure food systems, reduce geopolitical vulnerabilities, and protect ecosystems from salinization.

Training the Next Generation

Beyond the technology itself, David is deeply invested in people. His lab has trained an unusually large number of graduate students for an early-career faculty member, many of whom have gone on to faculty roles, startups, and leadership positions in water research.

He also leads outreach efforts with K–12 students, coaches intercollegiate water and marine energy teams, and believes strongly that early exposure to water science shapes future careers.

“If people understand water early,” he says, “they care about it differently.”

Looking Ahead

With NAWI’s support, David’s team is pushing batch reverse osmosis beyond proof-of-concept toward commercialization-ready scale. The goal is simple — and ambitious:

To make desalination and water reuse less energy-intensive, more resilient, and more capable of handling the waters we can no longer afford to ignore.

What began as a whiteboard exercise is now rolling on a trailer, valves humming, membranes cycling — quietly redefining what’s possible in water treatment.

The National Alliance for Water Innovation (NAWI) NextGen Program supports the development of early-career NAWI researchers and members of the alliance to help build a domestic workforce capable of driving future research and development in the water energy sector. Early-career NAWI-affiliated scientists, including graduate students, postdoctoral researchers, and early-career staff members are encouraged to join the program!

A recent article in the Chemical Engineering Journal details a study of how electromagnetic field (EMF) technology can reduce mineral scaling in water treatment systems and why results vary across applications. Mineral deposits such as calcium carbonate, gypsum, and silica—often called scale—can coat pipes, heat exchangers, and membranes, reducing efficiency, blocking flow, and increasing maintenance and cleaning demands. Conventional chemical antiscalants can be effective but raise concerns about handling, cost, waste, and the long-term complexity of continuous dosing and system monitoring.

The study by NAWI researchers Pei Xu, Xuewei Du, Huiyao Wang, Yanxing Wang, Fangjun Shu, Lawrence Anovitz, Ke Yuan, and others, shows that EMF treatment can reduce scaling by influencing both minerals suspended in water and crystals growing on surfaces. Bench tests on heat-exchanger and membrane-distillation systems showed fouling dropped by 15–79%, while pilot and field studies in reverse osmosis systems saw scaling fall by 40–45%. EMF effectiveness is highly dependent on water chemistry, system configuration, and operating conditions, which helps explain why some systems see strong results and others see less benefit.

EMF works through two main mechanisms: homogeneous nucleation in the bulk solution and heterogeneous crystal growth on surfaces. The study also explores how EMF strength, frequency, waveform, and flow velocity affect outcomes. By combining pilot-scale experiments and modeling simulations, the study shows how adjusting these parameters can optimize performance for different water treatment setups.

EMF systems operate without chemicals, produce no secondary waste, and require minimal energy. Case studies in cooling towers and reverse osmosis systems show reduced cleaning downtime, energy savings, and longer water reuse before blowdown or discharge. The study notes that hybrid approaches, combining EMF with low-dose antiscalants, may further improve reliability and cost-effectiveness, but systematic testing is needed to confirm performance and compatibility.

The authors conclude that EMF shows real potential for chemical-free scale control, but its effectiveness depends on a clear understanding of how it affects mineral behavior in water and how deposits attach to surfaces. Although long-term, full-scale validation and standardized testing protocols are still needed, the study sheds light on the mechanisms and operational factors that drive performance. By clarifying how EMF interacts with different water chemistries and system conditions, the study highlights the circumstances under which EMF could provide a reliable, cost-effective approach to reducing mineral scaling in a range of water systems.

Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS)—often called “forever chemicals”—are among the most stubborn contaminants found in drinking water today. Designed to resist heat, water, and degradation, these synthetic compounds persist in the environment and accumulate in the human body, making them notoriously difficult to remove using conventional treatment methods.

In a new study, researchers from the University of California Berkeley, the Colorado School of Mines, and Konkuk University in Seoul, and report a promising new approach: a family of porous polymer materials designed to rapidly and efficiently capture PFAS from water.

Rather than relying on a single material, the team developed a library of sponge-like adsorbents, each engineered with distinct chemical features intended to attract PFAS molecules. As contaminated water flows through the adsorbents, PFAS compounds bind to the material while clean water passes through. Testing the materials side by side allowed the researchers to directly compare how different chemical interactions embedded within the materials influence PFAS capture under realistic water conditions.

One clear trend emerged. Materials containing a positive charge were especially effective at drawing PFAS molecules in, highlighting electrostatic attraction as a key design principle for future PFAS adsorbents. Among the materials tested, one stood out for its performance—though the researchers emphasize that effectiveness alone is not enough.

The study also addresses a critical, and often overlooked, question in PFAS remediation: what happens after PFAS are removed from water? Captured PFAS must still be managed safely to avoid simply shifting contamination from one place to another. The researchers explore strategies for concentrating recovered PFAS so they can be more efficiently destroyed using emerging treatment technologies.

By considering adsorption and material regeneration together, this work underscores the importance of PFAS treatment solutions that function across the entire treatment lifecycle. Beyond demonstrating strong performance, the study provides practical design guidance for developing next-generation materials that are safer, more effective, and better suited for real-world water treatment systems.

As communities continue to grapple with widespread PFAS contamination, this research represents an important step toward technologies capable of addressing not just the presence of PFAS—but the full challenge of removing and ultimately eliminating them from water supplies.

A recent scientific review highlights how molecular simulations can guide the capture and degradation of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS). These persistent “forever chemicals” pose serious risks to the environment and human health.

Published in the Journal of Environmental Chemical Engineering, the article “Ab-initio Computational Methods for PFAS Adsorption and Degradation: A Critical Review” by Mohamed S. Mohamed, Brian P. Chaplin, and Ahmed A. Abokifa examines how atomic-scale modeling reveals interactions between PFAS molecules and various materials. It also examines how catalytic surfaces can accelerate PFAS breakdown.

The review focuses on computational techniques such as density functional theory (DFT) and ab initio molecular dynamics (AIMD). These methods show how PFAS adsorb and react on surfaces. These insights can guide the design of improved remediation strategies.

The authors report that PFAS adsorption depends on the type of interaction. The reactive “head group” drives chemical bonding, called chemisorption. The fluorinated chain controls weaker physical interactions, known as physisorption. Surface features, such as exposed crystal facets, defects, and preadsorbed species, also influence PFAS binding and degradation.

Catalytic and electrochemical surfaces can alter reaction pathways, which affects the speed of PFAS breakdown. The review also discusses how modeling choices—such as exchange-correlation functionals, dispersion corrections, and solvation models—affect simulation accuracy and recommend the appropriate level of theory for various applications.

Looking ahead, the authors call for more realistic simulations. They suggest including complex surface features and accurately representing PFAS charge states. They also recommend electrochemical models run under constant potential to better reflect real-world conditions. Additionally, machine learning trained on high-quality quantum data could speed the discovery of new PFAS degradation pathways.

By highlighting methodological gaps and offering validated computational protocols, the review helps identify the most effective simulation approaches. These insights can guide future studies and help develop practical strategies for mitigating PFAS contamination.

Exploring how tiny chemical structures can tackle big environmental challenges, from PFAS contamination to resource recovery.

What makes a material truly effective—and how can those insights spark the next generation of solutions? That’s the question NAWI researcher Ethan Pezoulas and his team are answering by moving beyond material design to uncover the principles that drive performance.

For Ethan, an interest in water started long before graduate school—shaped by years spent outdoors in Alberta, Canada. “I grew up hiking, camping, skiing, and playing hockey,” he says. “I was surrounded by rivers, lakes, and snow-fed streams. You can’t spend that much time outdoors and not start thinking about how vital water is—and how we manage it.”

After earning his BSc in Chemistry from the University of Calgary, Ethan moved to Berkeley to join the Jeff Long research group at UC Berkeley. Now in his fifth year of a Chemistry PhD program, he reflects: “I’ve been loving it.” His academic path was driven by curiosity and a desire to bridge two worlds—fundamental chemistry and real-world impact. “I like knowing the fundamental chemistry, but what’s most satisfying is applying it to real-world problems,” he says.

That mindset defines Ethan’s work today. “The overarching theme of my research is developing porous materials for aqueous separations of environmental and economic importance,” he explains. In simple terms, Ethan creates tiny structures with chemical ‘hooks’ that latch onto specific substances. He then builds these into porous materials—like advanced sponges—that can pull certain contaminants out of water while letting everything else pass through.

Within his NAWI project, Ethan is tackling two major challenges: removing selenium and PFAS from water. PFAS—often called “forever chemicals”—are persistent, harmful substances found in nearly every water source on the planet. Selenium, while essential in trace amounts, can be toxic at higher concentrations and is a growing concern in wastewater from agriculture and industry.

Ethan’s materials work by selectively binding these contaminants, pulling them from water while leaving behind what’s safe. And here’s the breakthrough: by studying why these chemical modifications work so well, Ethan and his team discovered design principles that can be applied beyond their current system.

“In theory, you could take what we learned about the chemical modifications and apply it to different frameworks or different sponges that might be better suited for other applications,” Ethan explains.

That insight turns a single innovation into a platform for many—enabling next-generation adsorbents that could address a wide range of water challenges.

For Ethan, this isn’t just academic achievement; it’s part of a bigger vision. “I want to keep doing research for direct application—taking what we know and applying it to real-world solutions,” he says. While he values fundamental science, his passion lies in innovation that makes a difference. “It’s satisfying to know the principles behind something, but the real excitement comes when you can see it making an impact.”

The National Alliance for Water Innovation (NAWI) played a pivotal role in this journey. Beyond funding, NAWI provided clarity on priorities, access to resources, and a network of collaborators. “NAWI gave us direction and connected us with a community. Those conversations and partnerships have been just as important as the research itself,” Ethan notes.

Outside of NAWI, Ethan is exploring how to recover critical minerals—such as precious metals or rare earth elements—from the chemical solutions left over after recycling electronics, magnets, and batteries. “Instead of mining raw materials, which can be environmentally destructive, we can recover critical elements from existing waste streams,” he says. This not only supports sustainability but also strengthens supply chains for clean energy technologies.

As he looks ahead, Ethan is leaning toward industry—where fundamental research can become products that change how water is treated worldwide. His work is a reminder that understanding the science behind performance isn’t just academic—it’s the key to unlocking cleaner, safer, and more sustainable water technologies for the future.

NAWI and the NextGen Program are seeking participants for the 2025 – 2026 mentorship program (Oct. 2025 – March 2026). Applications are due on October 1, 2025 – apply today!

Apply to be a Mentee
Apply to be a Mentor

About the Program

The NAWI NextGen Mentorship Program leverages the NAWI Network’s experiences and expertise to:

Foster meaningful connections across career stages and disciplines
Empower young professionals to learn from mentors and peers
Build relationships that support professional and personal growth

Mentor-mentee groups pair mentors, who are typically further along in their education or career, with at least one early-career mentee. We anticipate offering several types of mentorship programs this year, including groups focused on PhD Advice, Careers in Industry, Careers in Academia, and Careers in National Labs. Availability will depend on interest.

The program consists of six mentor-mentee meetings and three career-focused webinars scheduled between October 2025 and March 2026. There are opportunities for limited participation if you are unable to commit to the entire program.

Who Can Apply

Anyone excited about water technologies – whether you’re just starting out or already building your career!

Mentees: Undergraduate and graduate students, postdocs, early-career professionals, or professionals interested in a career transition
Mentors: Postdocs, research staff, faculty, and experienced professionals from industry, academia, and national labs

NAWI affiliation is not required for participation.

Mentor and Mentee Expectations

Mentors will:

Help mentees set and achieve professional development goals
Provide guidance based on discussions with mentees
Facilitate professional connections for mentees
Share life experiences openly with mentees and maintain confidentiality

Mentees will:

Define career goals and self-assess professional strengths and areas for improvement
Work with mentor to develop a plan for achieving career goals
Actively schedule and participate in meetings
Seek feedback, be receptive to coaching, share successes and setbacks, and maintain confidentiality

How to Apply

If you are interested in participating in the NAWI NextGen mentorship program, please complete the program application, in which you’ll share your aspirations, educational background, personal interests, and more. Applications are due Oct. 1, 2025. We will announce matching results on Oct. 6, 2025.

Apply to be a Mentee
Apply to be a Mentor

For more information, email the NextGen mentorship program lead, Hannah Holmes, at with questions!

Hannah Holmes’s journey from a small town in southern Illinois to the research labs at Stanford University was driven by curiosity and a passion for making science meaningful, especially for communities like the one where she grew up.

Raised in a town of just 4,000 residents, she had little early exposure to science. That changed in high school when a chemistry class sparked her curiosity. Her interest grew after shadowing a female chemical engineer at the oil refinery where her father worked. Inspired by the field’s use of science and math to solve real-world problems, she went on to study chemical engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

Hannah’s academic path has spanned several scientific areas, all of which have focused on pollutant removal and reuse. At the University of Illinois, she worked on electrochemical processes that transform carbon dioxide into fuels and chemicals. During her Ph.D. studies at Georgia Tech, her research centered on carbon capture from air or flue gas. After a post-seminar conversation with Stanford’s Will Tarpeh, she shifted her focus to water-based separations, leading to her current role as a postdoctoral researcher in his lab.

At Stanford, she is developing electrochemical processes to recover nutrients from wastewater. Her work involves building low-impact systems to recover critical nutrients like phosphate, an essential component of agricultural fertilizers. After fertilizer application, excess nutrients carried by irrigation or rainfall to lakes and reservoirs can cause large algae blooms, which harm both the environment and human health. A key project uses a hybrid electrochemical ion exchange process to recover phosphate as fertilizer through electrochemical regeneration, a lower-carbon, more cost-effective alternative to conventional chemical methods. She explains, “By recovering phosphate as fertilizer, we can close the loop and transform pollutants back into valuable products.”

What sets her research apart is its multi-scale approach. One day she might analyze molecular-level adsorption mechanisms with synchrotron tools; the next, evaluate broader impacts through technoeconomic and life cycle analysis. This range allows her to approach each challenge from both molecular and systems-level perspectives. She notes that while adsorbent and electrochemical processes have been scaled independently, integrating them shows great promise. “There’s a path forward for integrated systems,” she says.

Her interest in environmental technologies is rooted in a pivotal undergraduate lecture on the disproportionate effects of climate change on rural areas. “I wanted to use my chemical engineering background to help places like my hometown,” she recalls.

Looking ahead, Hannah hopes to expand her work to other pollutants—both gaseous and aqueous—and envisions “refineries of the future” that turn waste into valuable products using scalable, energy-efficient technologies. But she acknowledges that technical innovation alone is not enough. “We still need buy-in from funders and treatment facilities,” she says, citing the inertia and limited incentives that can slow real-world adoption.

Although her work is highly technical, Hannah emphasizes the human side of science. She values in-person interactions—especially at conferences—for building authentic, lasting relationships. As a member of the National Alliance for Water Innovation (NAWI) NextGen Leadership Committee, Hannah recently helped lead a mixer during the NAWI quarterly review meeting to encourage interaction and collaboration among graduate students, postdocs, and early-career water researchers.

Mentorship plays a central role in Hannah’s life. As an undergraduate, she was placed in a program for students considered less likely to succeed. That experience, and the support it provided, helped define her approach to science and mentoring. “Everything I’ve accomplished is because mentors positively influenced the trajectory of my life, and I would love to provide that same support for others,” she says. “Mentoring students and seeing them advance on their own paths is one of my proudest achievements.”

In fall 2025, she will lead the mentorship program for the NAWI NextGen Leadership Committee. She is eager to involve mentees in the process and help early-career researchers connect and grow. As part of the program last year, Hannah advised Ph.D. students on maximizing productivity, finding early-career positions, and achieving a healthy work-life balance. As for the latter, she shares straightforward advice for Ph.D. students: “Take breaks, get outside, and stay proactive about communication with your mentor and collaborators.”

Outside the lab, Hannah enjoys walking around campus, spending time in nature, and playing with her cat, Friday. During the final year of her Ph.D., a visit to Climeworks’ direct air capture facility in Switzerland reminded her that the technologies she works on aren’t just theoretical—they are already being deployed. The site, one of the world’s first commercial-scale direct air capture plants, used modular units to extract carbon dioxide directly from the atmosphere for storage or reuse.

As she prepares to apply for faculty positions in chemical engineering, she stays focused on what initially drew her to science—curiosity and a desire to make a difference—along with what has sustained her commitment: mentoring the next generation of scientists and engineers.

Cost optimization models for emerging water treatment processes benefit from holistic assessment of an entire process, including considerations for pretreatment, which can be costly. Previous optimization models have not accounted for the impact of chemical phenomena that occur during water treatment, such as chemical reactions that occur during pretreatment and mineral scaling in membrane treatment processes.

Mineral scaling—the buildup of minerals in a membrane, affecting its performance—presents a critical challenge to achieving high water recovery rates. As researchers refine desalination designs, they must consider the cost tradeoffs of reducing mineral scaling with desalination processes. Modeling frameworks should account for many variables in addition to mineral scaling as high-recovery treatment trains are optimized.

NAWI researchers Oluwamayowa Amusat, Adam Atia, Tim Barthlomew, and Alexander Dudchenko developed a cost optimization modeling framework for the technoeconomic assessment of desalination systems with mineral scaling and precipitation incorporated. The work—published in ACS ES&T Engineering—details a framework that includes mathematical optimization of complex processes with detailed water chemistry predictions for phenomena like mineral scaling and precipitation.

NAWI’s framework is generalizable and is demonstrated through its application to hypothetical high-recovery treatment trains for brackish and seawater desalination, centered on high-pressure reverse osmosis (HPRO), an emerging technology that shows significant promise for advanced desalination applications. This is the first technoeconomic assessment to incorporate mineral scaling predictions and chemical pretreatment into HPRO optimization. The approach includes a technoeconomic assessment on a conceptual treatment train that includes chemical pretreatment—soda ash softening and recarbonation—and membrane-based desalination in standard and HPRO.

The framework anticipates pretreatment, cost, and operational requirements needed for high recovery desalination that is cost effective and feasible. Results show that the overall cost of treatment is dominated by the soda ash softening process, while a pH control step is needed to control calcium carbonate scaling, which is critical for reaching higher water recoveries in seawater and brackish water treatment. The findings indicate that more research into reducing the cost of scaling control is worthy of further investigation.

The research emphasizes the importance of a holistic approach to optimization design, where pretreatment and primary treatment considerations are incorporated as key elements for cost-optimal operation.

The Water treatment Technoeconomic Assessment Platform (WaterTAP) is NAWI’s flagship modeling and technoeconomic analysis (TEA) software tool. Through the development of WaterTAP, NAWI seeks to help those in the water community perform rigorous TEA of current and novel water treatment unit processes and systems through an integrated modeling and simulation capability. Now we need your help to expand the accessibility and use of WaterTAP.

Whether you are a novice when it comes to WaterTAP or have some experience and wish to deepen your knowledge, we invite you to apply to join the fall cohort of the WaterTAP Academy by June 30, 2025, to learn and enhance your skills in a structured learning environment.

What You’ll Learn and When

In the first cohort of the WaterTAP Academy, participants will learn to use WaterTAP with the goal of applying it to a specific problem or project of their choosing. Participants will be taught in a set of weekly online workshops and lectures by WaterTAP experts, and will also receive one-on-one support during office hours as they develop their project models. The Fall 2025 WaterTAP Learning Cohort takes place over 8 weeks:

The first two weeks of November 2025
The first two weeks of December 2025
All four weeks of January 2026.

Who Should Apply

Applicants from across the water treatment innovation ecosystem are encouraged to apply, including:

Consulting engineers who seek to rigorously compare the performance and cost of different variations of advanced water treatment trains;
Academic and industrial researchers seeking to evaluate the marginal value of new treatment unit processes in the context of complete treatment trains; and/or
Water treatment technology developers seeking to quantify the operational and cost improvements possible with new materials (e.g. membranes) unit processes or treatment trains.
WaterTAP Academy participants should have a little experience using Python (though not required) and have general familiarity with water treatment process modeling. Applicants should bring a targeted question or modeling objective relevant to their current work as NAWI experts will work to customize course materials to meet participants’ needs and skill levels.

Questions?

Please reach out to Adam Atia, copying , if you have questions. Learn more about WaterTAP.

Apply today!