Madina Mahmoud '12, '18 Receives Prestigious Award from Italy for 'A New Future for Water' Research
Congratulations to Madina Mahmoud '12, '18 for receiving the 2019 Eni Young African Talents Award for her research on "a new future for water" — in energy, sustainability and environmental protection solutions. The award offers a PhD scholarship, with which she will complete her studies at an Italian university or research institute.
Eni's international competition for applied energy research launched in 2007 to find the best studies into efficiency, sustainability and environmental protection. Every year, it involves the most important scientific institutions in the world and Eni's own laboratories. Mahmoud's research offers advanced desalination of saltwater that makes it reusable for irrigation or livestock purposes. In Italy, she will build on her Master of Science research at AUC on novel nanocomposite membranes for water filtration applications, supervised by Chemistry Professor and Dean of Graduate Studies Adham Ramadan '91 and Mechanical Engineering Professor and Associate Dean in the School of Sciences and Engineering Amal Esawi '89, '90.
"It goes without saying that without the efforts of Adham Ramadan, dean of graduate studies, and Amal Esawi, associate dean of graduate studies, I wouldn't be where I am today," Mahmoud said.
"As the world is growing more concerned about the scarcity of freshwater resources and the rising awareness of the need to save these water resources, particularly in Egypt, academia and research provide us with membrane technology that can help countries around the world save more freshwater," Mahmoud said.
Mahmoud uses membrane technology to desalinate saltwater. The implementation of her research would be to use desalinated water for livestock watering and/or irrigation while saving scarce freshwater resources for drinking. Her method, using CA/GO membranes, showed an improved performance as well as promising results concerning the purification of high salinity water. The application of such technology on a wide scale can be highly useful for communities in dire need of finding alternative ways to preserve their water resources and can have positive impacts on the environment in the long term.
"I will never forget the role that AUC played in making this achievement possible, and I hope one day I return to AUC and give back knowledge just as I received it."
