Baraka Lwoya

My career goal involves transitioning into a career in academia or industry with a great research emphasis on trying to solve the rampant issue of water contamination. Polymer membranes have demonstrated great promise as a means of water purification since the 1960s. The applied aspect of my current research involves utilizing nanoporous membranes for enhanced oil spill recovery. This project will tackle challenges such as tradeoffs between geometric constraints, selectivity, and mechanical durability, factors that still remain to be optimized among current membranes. In addition to solving these problems with our block copolymer system, this technology will be tailored for other applications in the future such as purifying produced water and decontaminating water streams.

As a Ph.D. student, my research expertise focuses on developing novel polymeric material that can be utilized for nanoporous membranes and nano-lithographic template. Recently my advisor receiving funding from National Science Foundation, which we aim at using in studying novel materials for oil-spill remediation, and nanoelectronic devices. The novelty of our work is the focused on breaking the barriers of the nanotechnology size limitation (<20 nm) in computer chips, and use organic membranes for separating oil-water mixtures.

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