Nature Forum on Decentralized Water Technologies for Point of Consumption
Presented by Nature Nanotechnology

Fabio Pulizzi is the Chief Editor of Nature Nanotechnology. He joined Nature Research in 2006 where he worked at Nature Materials, first as an associate and then as a senior editor, before moving to his current role in 2012. A solid state physicists by background, after graduating from the University of Rome la Sapienza with a master thesis on High Tc superconductivity he moved to Nijmegen, the Netherlands, for his PhD work on the optoelectronics of semiconductor quantum wells. Between 2002 and 2005 he was a postdoctoral researcher in Nottingham and Sheffield, studying transport and optical properties of quantum dots. As an editor, he has covered a wide range of topics, initially within the condensed matter physics and materials science areas, and in the last few years on the role played by technology in environmental issues, primarily clean water and agriculture.

Dr. Peng Wang is a faculty member at and The Hong Kong Polytechnic University and King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) in Saudi Arabia. His research focuses on renewable energy driven clean water production and wastewater treatment. Dr. Wang is the Fellow of Royal Society of Chemistry (FRSC). He was the recipient of the 9th Prince Sultan bin Abdulaziz International Prize for Water (PSIPW) in the category of alternative water resources (2020). He received the Nanova Frontier Research Award from the Chinese-American Professors in Environmental Engineering and Science (CAPEES) in 2020. He serves as an Executive Editor of Environmental Science & Technology (ES&T).

Andrea Schaefer's research is focused on the application of membranes for water applications with the vision ‘Safe Water for All Children’. Key focus includes new membrane materials with higher efficiency & controllable contaminant and micropollutant removal, understanding of retention and fouling in complex and realistic water matrices that informs material development and process design and development of systems that operate long term in the most difficult circumstances such as rural area or developing countries.

Evelyn N. Wang is the Ford Professor of Engineering and Department Head in the Mechanical Engineering Department at MIT. She received her BS from MIT, and MS and PhD from Stanford University in Mechanical Engineering. From 2006-2007, she was a postdoctoral researcher at Bell Laboratories. Her research interests include fundamental studies of micro/nanoscale heat and mass transport and the development of efficient thermal management, solar thermal energy conversion, and water harvesting systems. Her work has been honored with awards including 2008 DARPA Young Faculty Award, the 2011 Air Force Office of Scientific Research Young Investigator Award, the 2012 Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award, the 2012 ASME Bergles-Rohsenow Young Investigator Award, the 2016 ASME EPPD Women Engineer Award, the 2017 ASME Gustus L. Larson Award, and the 2020 ICNMM Prominent Researcher Award. She was recognized as one of Foreign Policy’s Global Re-Thinkers in 2017. She is an ASME Fellow.

Dr. Kala Fleming is a social entrepreneur and CEO of Diaspora AI, an international consultancy that provides technology-enabled community health solutions that increase access to water and green space and improve quality of life. Her seminal TED talk in 2015 on creating digital aquifers inspired a range of forward-thinking water management projects, from Kenya to California, that seek to use more granular water activity data to reduce water scarcity risks. Dr Fleming holds a PhD in Civil and Environmental Engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She has lived and worked in the US, Caribbean, Kenya, Ghana and the Philippines and is a frequent speaker at entrepreneurship, international development and innovation-related events.

Amy J. Pickering, Ph.D. is the Blum Center Distinguished Chair in Global Poverty and Practice jointly appointed in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and the Blum Center for Developing Economies. Dr. Pickering’s research combines tools from multiple disciplines (engineering, economics, microbiology, epidemiology) to identify low-cost and scalable interventions to interrupt disease transmission in low-income countries. Dr. Pickering has 15 years of experience collaborating with partners in Benin, Kenya, Tanzania, Mali, Mexico, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and India on research to improve human health and well-being. Dr. Pickering received her B.S. in Biological and Environmental Engineering from Cornell University, M.S. in Environmental Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley, and Ph.D. from the Interdisciplinary Program for Environment and Resources at Stanford University. Prior to Berkeley, Dr. Pickering held positions as the Tiampo Family Assistant Professor at Tufts University, senior fellow and research engineer at Stanford University, an environmental engineer at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and Fulbright Fellow in Malaysia.