Omar Kazi, a PhD student in the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering (PME) at the University of Chicago, was recently awarded the Science Olympiad Alumni Research (SOAR) grant. The grant includes $25,000 from the Science Olympiad USA Foundation for Science Olympiad alumni doing breakthrough research at U.S. universities.
Growing stress on limited global freshwater resources, coupled with an insufficient water treatment infrastructure, are threats to the health and security of billions of people across the world. Kazi, who works alongside Seth Darling, a UChicago CASE senior scientist and the advanced energy technologies chief science and technology officer at Argonne National Laboratory, seeks a solution to this problem through interfacial solar steam generation (ISSG), a process that uses porous photothermal materials to convert sunlight into heat.
Kazi plans to utilize the SOAR Grant for equipment such as an infrared thermal camera, computers, modeling software licenses, thermocouples and hygrometers to be used as he transitions from the lab-scale to pilot-scale phase.
“Evaporation has been utilized for both cleaning water and recovering resources for millennia. However, this process is extremely energy intensive. Concentrating thermal energy at the air-water interface is a route to major improvements in efficiency,” said Darling, who also serves as director of Argonne’s Advanced Materials for Energy-Water Systems Center.
Science Olympiad is a non-profit organization dedicated to improving the quality of K-12 science education, increasing opportunity and diversity in science, creating a technologically-literate workforce and providing recognition for outstanding achievement by both students and teachers. The organization runs STEM competitions for K-12 students across the nation.