In eighth grade, Omar Kazi had a plan. Growing up in Naperville, Illinois, he always loved science, and now he had an idea of how to put his scientific skillset to good use: water conservation.
Instead of running our faucets until the water became warm, he thought, what if we instead used a sensor that kept the water from flowing until it heated up?
“That was the start of my interest in water sustainability,” he said. “It’s one of our major challenges, and I knew I wanted to do something to help.”
The sensor never came to fruition, but Kazi studied electrical engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign with the goal of finding more systematic solutions to global environmental problems. Internships at Argonne taught him about lithium-ion battery recycling processes, and he began to understand that many solutions required a multidisciplinary approach. Materials science — with its combination of physics, chemistry, and engineering — seemed to offer a way forward.
“I was somebody who liked a lot of different scientific disciplines,” he said. “I didn’t like being siloed, and materials science seemed like a way to work on green technology, like batteries, solar cells, and membranes.”
A PhD program at the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering (PME), with its interdisciplinary focus on global problems, felt like the natural next step. When he arrived on campus, Kazi turned his focus back to that eighth-grade project: water science.
“In Chicago, we live in one of the most water-secure places in the country,” he said. “We are fortunate to have that security while billions of people don’t. If we can do something to change that, then that is what I want to do.”
With Dr. Seth Darling, Kazi conducts research in solar water evaporation to both purify water and extract resources from it. The team is developing a material made from biochar — carbonized organic waste — that can float in water, absorb sunlight, convert that energy to heat, and cause the water to evaporate much more quickly.
That evaporated water, now purified in the air, can be recovered and used as a clean water source. The resources in the water that were left behind — like lithium, for example — can also be recovered much more easily.
“We want to achieve a high evaporation rate at a low cost, which is challenging, and we want to deploy this in areas that don’t have the infrastructure for water purification,” Kazi said.
When not conducting research, Kazi teaches the next generation of scientists at the South Side Science Festival and by volunteering in local elementary schools.
“When I was a kid, I thought the after-school science club was the coolest thing in the world,” he said. “That’s where I began to cultivate a passion for science. Now, I think it is an important responsibility and opportunity for us UChicago students to give back to this community and create more opportunities like that for local students.”