CHEE Student Selected as Carson Scholar
It took a perfect storm of events to turn Varinia Felix into an environmental engineer and one of the University of Arizona's 12 2020 Carson Scholars.
While she was studying architecture at the Autonomous University of Ciudad Juárez University in Mexico, she and a group of fellow students visited a site in the city of Chihuahua.
They hoped the site would become home to a sustainable community center, but those dreams were washed away by a torrential rainstorm. Realizing how much the environment can affect people living in low-income communities made Felix rethink her future.
“How could we think about designing a green building when we couldn’t even guarantee a safe environment where people would be guaranteed safe, clean water?” she wondered. “Suddenly, I was overcome with the feeling of wanting to improve society in a much larger scope.”
Felix went on to earn her master’s degree in environmental engineering with an emphasis in water treatment technologies at the University of Texas at El Paso, or UTEP. Her research there centered around using reverse osmosis for water treatment in underserved communities.
While at UTEP, Felix heard about the UA Water & Energy Sustainable Technology Center, or WEST Center, where university researchers work with with Pima County, Tucson Water and industry partners to develop new technologies dealing with water scarcity and reuse. Excited by the opportunity to take a more technical research approach, Felix headed west to Tucson after graduation to work on her doctorate.
As a member of the Achilli Research and Teaching Lab, Felix studies different membrane processes for water treatment. She is currently conducting life cycle assessments for different water treatment systems. Felix hopes to pursue a hybrid career between consulting and academia after graduation, and she said the Carson Scholar Program is an ideal opportunity to expand her horizons.
“The other students in the program are very open to give their perspectives,” she said. “The experience encourages me to get out of my comfort zone.”