UC graduate Abdulaziz Al Anazi, left, and UC College of Engineering and Applied Science professor Dionysios Dionysiou talk in an environmental engineering lab.
The Prince Sultan Bin Abdulaziz International Prize for Water will be awarded to University of Cincinnati College of Engineering and Applied Science distinguished research professor Dionysios Dionysiou and his student research team for their work studying ways to address water pollution. UC researchers will receive the Creativity Prize for their work developing advanced oxidation technologies and nanotechnologies to monitor and treat emerging toxins and other contaminants of emerging concern in water. The biannual award recognizes cutting-edge innovation in water research. Five prizes in different categories are bestowed every two years.
Dionysiou’s research team in the Department of Chemical and Environmental Engineering includes UC graduates Ying Huang, Wael H.M. Abdelraheem, Abdulaziz Al Anazi, Jiong Gao and Vasileia Vogiazi. Researchers from Yale, Brown and the University of California, Berkeley, were among the 2022 award recipients.
Dionysiou has studied diverse topics such as water treatment, reuse and purification, detection of contaminants and water sustainability. His research reportedly has been supported by more than $8 million in grant funding.
“I am from Cyprus. Water is a big issue for us. Our climate is like San Diego and many years we have droughts,” says Dionysiou in a press release from UC. “Sometimes water wouldn’t be available. When I started my academic career, I was interested in water quality and how to remove pollutants. Some of our more recent work deals with sensing contaminants in water.”
Among the projects Dionysiou’s lab has tackled is detecting and treating cyanobacteria toxins in water. Also known as blue-green algae, cyanobacteria can reproduce quickly in water inundated with fertilizer runoff. Its resulting decomposition can deplete the oxygen from the water, creating massive die-offs of fish and other aquatic life.
Read the entire press release at: www.uc.edu
