Bezawit Getachew
Assistant Professor in Environmental Engineering
Research Faculty, NSF NEWT Center
SURF Mentoring
Potential projects/topics: The project is on vapor phase infiltration of metal oxides into polymeric membranes. The goal is to make water treatment membranes that are more selective and chemically and mechanically resilient. This is an exciting project that will teach the student hands on experimental design, material characterization techniques and data analysis skills.
Potential skills gained: Experimental design, material characterization, data analysis.
Required qualifications: Introductory chemical engineering or environmental engineering courses, chemistry
Direct mentor: Post-doctorate
Research Areas
Dr. Getachew’s research focuses on understanding the performance of “smart materials” in the context of water treatment technologies and systems. Smart materials, also called responsive materials, undergo significant physico-chemical changes in response to external stimuli. Their dynamic behavior can be used for sensing, actuating, self-healing, and controlled-release applications, among many others. Smart materials could play a role in enhancing the versatility and sustainability of water treatment technologies and systems but advances in the design and synthesis of such functional materials are currently focused on and driven by applications outside the environmental engineering field. Research in Dr. Getachew’s lab aims to 1) evaluate the performance of different kinds of smart materials in environmentally relevant conditions, 2) integrate them into water treatment technologies and assess their performance against state-of-the-art technologies, and 3) design new materials and composite structures to enable previously unavailable functionalities.
