Our distinguished Advisory Board is made up of the leading minds in desalination, membrane science, and nanotechnology.
Eric Hoek
University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)
Dr. Eric M.V. Hoek is an Associate Professor of and Henry Samueli Chair in the Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering at UCLA. In addition, Prof. Hoek is a faculty member of the California NanoSystems Institute and the UCLA Water Technology Research Center. Hoek’s education includes a blend of experiences in environmental engineering, chemical engineering, aquatic colloidal chemistry, interfacial science, and membrane technology through his Ph.D. and M.S. degrees from Yale University, M.S. from UCLA and B.S. from Penn State. Hoek’s general research and teaching interests include water treatment, renewable energy production, and environmental protection – all keys to sustainability. For many years, his research has focused on improving the performance, reducing the costs, and mitigating environmental impacts associated with membrane-based desalination and wastewater reclamation processes. In this pursuit, Hoek and co-workers have established better diagnostic tools, methods, and models as well as advanced membrane material, module, and process designs – including their invention of thin film nano-composite membrane technology. In the past decade, Hoek’s research group has produced more than 70 publications and given more than 160 presentations at scientific meetings, professional conferences, and technical workshops.
Tom Pankratz
Editor - Water Desalination Report
Tom Pankratz is Editor of the Water Desalination Report, a weekly publication of Global Water Intelligence. He also serves as an independent desalination consultant and technical advisor. Tom has been involved in the water industry for his entire career and participated in the development of some of the world's largest and most technically advanced desalination and water reuse projects. He was appointed to National Academy of Sciences desalination roadmap review committee, the WHO Desalination Guidelines Technology/Chemistry/Engineering Working Group, and the research advisory council of the Middle East Desal Research Center. His water experience includes international assignments in the Middle East and Europe, and he has written several industry-related books including the "desalination.com", "Dictionary of Environmental Engineering", and "Screening Equipment Handbook". He has also written technical papers on subjects ranging from seawater desalination to water reuse to zero liquid discharge.
Menachem Elimelech
Director of Environment Engineering, Yale University
Menachem Elimelech holds a B.S. in Soil and Water Sciences and an M.S. in Environmental Science and Technology from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and a Ph.D. in Environmental Engineering from Johns Hopkins University. As his first appointment, Elimelech served as professor and vice chair of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at UCLA. Upon coming to Yale in 1998, he founded Yale's Environmental Engineering Program, of which he continues to serve as director. Professor Elimelech was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2006 and was awarded the Athalie Richardson Irvine Clarke Prize in 2005. His research focuses on problems involving physicochemical and biophysical processes in engineered and natural environmental systems, including: (i) membrane separations for desalination and water quality control, (ii) transport and adhesion of microbial pathogens, (iii) processes involving nanoparticles and biomacromolecules, and (iv) water, sanitation, and public health in developing countries. Professor Elimelech has authored more than 160 refereed journal publications and is a co-author of the book Particle Deposition and Aggregation (1995). He currently serves on the Editorial Advisory Boards of Colloids and Surfaces A, Desalination, Environmental Science & Technology, Environmental Engineering Science, Langmuir, and Separation Science and Technology.
William John Koros
Professor of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering at the College of Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology
Professor Koros is the Roberto C. Goizueta Chair in Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering at the College of Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology. His research focuses on developing advanced materials based on blends of nanoscopic molecular sieving entities and solution-processable polymers. The molecular sieve entities have sub-nanoscopic size-selecting windows, thereby enabling separation of molecules such as oxygen and nitrogen with sizes differing by as little as 0.02 nm. Research interests are on fundamental transport, sorption and permeation processes of small molecules in nanoscopically engineered environments. Application of this fundamental understanding enables creation of large scale membrane separation modules by integration of materials engineering from the nanoscopic to the macro scale in hollow fiber spinning processes.
Yushan Yan
Professor, Chair, and University Scholar, Department of Chemical & Environmental Engineering, University of California, Riverside
Professor Yan received his B. S. in Chemical Physics from the University of Science and Technology of China in 1988, and his M. S. and Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the California Institute of Technology in 1995 and 1997, respectively. He worked for AlliedSignal Inc. as a Senior Staff Engineer and Project Leader from 1996 to 1998. He went to the University of California, Riverside in 1998 as Assistant Professor and was promoted to Associate Professor in 2002 and Professor in 2005. In 2006 he was chosen as one of the five inaugural University Scholars. His research has been widely cited in the scientific community and also extensively covered by the media and technical magazines including New Scientist, Business Week, Materials Today, C&EN News of the American Chemical Society, Interface of Electrochemical Society, CNBC, CNN.com, China Press, and several Radio Stations.