Achilli Interviewed by Royal Society of Chemistry

CHEE assistant professor Andrea Achilli was recently interviewed for the Royal Society of Chemistry after publishing a paper in their Emerging Investigator Series. His research on membrane distillation and high salinity appeared in the journal Environmental Science: Water Research & Technology. 

The following excerpt is from the interview: 

Your recent Emerging Investigator Series paper focuses on the analysis of membrane distillation for high salinity waters. How has your research evolved from your first article to this most recent article?

I started my PhD because of my passion on advanced wastewater treatment using membranes. Since then I have been increasingly focusing on desalination and water reuse, mainly because these systems are at the intersection between energy and water. There is a huge opportunity in managing concentrated waste streams from inland desalination and water reuse by realizing full resource recovery in wet streams.

What aspect of your work are you most excited about at the moment?

Interacting with talented PhD students. Without any doubts. They challenge me and they’re doing great research. I am very proud of the work they are putting out and how they shaped the lab in the past couple of years. In terms of research, I am very fortunate to work in a research center that was created to tackle water reuse challenges. There I can do research at different scales, from surface chemistry to operating pilot-scale systems 24/7, and I am also forming close collaborations outside of engineering.