December 2022
Prof. Jessica Ray was featured in Chemical & Engineering News Water Magazine The future of clean water Discovery Report.
October 2022
Group hiking trip in Cougar Mountain Regional Wildland Park!
August 2022
Prof. Ray and group members partner with AVELA and Hip Hop is Green to lead a water treatment activity. K-12 students were tasked with treating “polluted” stormwater in their rain garden filters!
June 2022
AIMS Group yoga led by Jen Hooper and Alanna Hildebrandt!
May 2022
Prof. Ray, Prof. William Tarpeh and Prof. Jacelyn Rice-Boayue were awarded a National Science Foundation Broadening Participation in Engineering award to identify strategies to improve retention and recruitment of Black, junior Environmental Engineering faculty to academic institutions.
May 2022
HUGE Congratulations to Prof. Ray who was awarded the National Science Foundation CAREER Award!! The focus of her CAREER award is to develop a novel, composite material capable of targeted, catalytic reduction of persistent organohalogens in water.
April 2022
Prof. Ray and Prof. Dodd took their class on a field trip to the Tolt Drinking Water Treatment Facility!
February 2022
Prof. Jessica Ray featured in Chemical & Engineering News feature about urban stormwater management.
December 2021
Prof. Ray and her good friend, Prof. William Tarpeh at Stanford University participated in a Chemical & Engineering News Stereo Chemistry podcast.
November 2021
Our activated biochar made from used coffee grounds and featured in Jess S.’s paper is a now a patent-protected product! Congratulations, Jess!
October 2021
Jessica Steigerwald and Prof. Ray file a patent for our spent coffee grounds derived biochar for water treatment.
October 2021
Prof. Jim Gawel invites Prof. Ray to speak at the virtual Grit City Think and Drink. She gave a talk about “Low-cost engineered materials for enhanced contaminant removal in urban stormwater”.
October 2021
Prof. Jessica Ray is now an Adjunct Assistant Professor in Chemical Engineering.
October 2021
Managed to catch a break in the rain to do some kayaking on Lake Union!
September 2021
Got together in person and indoors for some safe group fun! We had a blast testing our skills at rock climbing!
August 2021
Fanny Okaikue-Woodi and Jess Steigerwald presented their research during the Fall 2021 American Chemical Society Meeting in Atlanta, GA. Great job!!
August 2021
As a 2020 C&EN Talented 12 honoree, Dr. Ray was interviewed for the Thermo Fisher Scientific “Bringing Chemistry to Life” podcast. Check out the episode below!
June 2021
The third book in our anti-racism book club series! We just finished reading this book during the summer. We learned a lot about how progressive liberalism and color-blind racism are supported by each other and reinforced through policies and legislation.
June 2021
Prof. Ray was interviewed for PBS NOVA’s feature on “Why toxic ‘forever chemicals’ are in the blood of most Americans”.
June 2021
Dr. Ray was awarded the University of Washington Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering 2021 Faculty Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Award.
June 2021
Congratulations, Nikki! Today Nikki successfully defended her Masters thesis! The title of Nikki’s thesis is: “Viability of spent coffee grounds biochar as a filtration media to remove organic contaminants from urban stormwater in the Puget Sound”. Way to go!
May 2021
Dr. Yuemei Ye completes her postdoc in our group. We wish her well on the next stage of her journey!
May 2021
Prof. Jessica Ray featured in Thermo Fisher Scientific’s Bringing Chemistry to Life podcast (season 2, episode 7). The title of the podcast is “Fresh urban water”.
April 2021
A masked and distanced hang in the beautiful Arboretum Park close to campus. Plus another mini Spikeball tournament!
March 2021
Jess S. and Nikki receive the 2021 University of Washington CoMotion Innovation Fund for our water treatment product which converts used coffee grounds into a porous, high surface area adsorbent! We are now in the process of filing a patent for this technology!
March 2021
Dr. Ray was featured in a University of Washington Black History Month Instagram post.
March 2021
Prof. Jessica Ray featured in the UW The Daily Newspaper.
March 2021
The second book in our anti-racism book club series. This book was a great way for us to contextualize the interconnectedness of racism, urban pollution and environmental injustice.
January 2021
Nikki Redden, Jessica Steigerwald and Prof. Ray are awarded a $50K grant from UW CoMotion to continue developing the spent coffee ground biochar for water treatment applications.
January 2021
Nikki built lab-scale columns to begin examining the ability of the activated, spent coffee grounds to remove organic contaminants in urban stormwater.
December 2020
We finished our first anti-racism book club book! Ijeoma Oluo is a Seattle-based author. We learned a lot by reading this book. It was a great entry to our future discussions about structural racism and environmental justice.
October 2020
Dr. Ray was interviewed for a Harvard University Pint-Sized Science podcast.
August 2020
Congratulations to Professor Ray! Ray is a 2020 honoree in the Chemical & Engineering News Class of 2020 Talented 12. The Talented 12 honor is given to nominated assistant professors across all areas of chemistry and chemical technology disciplines. Ray was dubbed the “Water Protector” for her group’s work designing novel, engineered materials to treat contaminants in water, and will be featured at the 2020 C&EN Futures Festival along with the other 11 honorees this year.
July 2020
Professor Ray is awarded the 2020 Rogel Faculty Support Award! The award honors an outstanding junior faculty member in the College of Engineering, the School of Medicine or the College of Forestry. Congratulations!
April 2020
The AIMS group hosted a virtual game night during the pandemic quarantine. Can you guess what the “event” was for this group picture?
April 2020
Nikki Redden and Prof. Ray join a collaborative and multi-disciplinary student-led team to engage with the piloting of the San Juan Basin Green Stormwater Infrastructure Regional Treatment Facility connected to the new Health Sciences Education Building. The team is awarded a $92,568 UW Campus Sustainability Fund to support this work. Nikki will apply a new biochar developed in the AIMS Lab to remove contaminants in urban stormwater infiltrating the new bioswale on campus.
February 2020
Prof. Ray and a group of students enrolled in CEWA 549: Physical Chemical Treatment Processes took a field trip to the Green River Water Treatment Plant. The tour was led by Celine Mina, a UW Civil & Environmental Engineering alumna!
November 2019
Congratulations to Dr. Cherukumilli! At a University of Washington CoMotion Connect event, Katya won 1st prize for best poster and pitch!
November 2019
Yuemei hosted a potluck dinner at her home. We ate delicious Chinese food!
October 2019
I hosted a group potluck at my home. We were also celebrating Katya’s birthday!
September 2019
Katya and Max have finished testing their filter columns in the lab this summer. The exciting findings are being written up in a paper that we hope to submit soon!
August 2019
Daaniya and Max present their research posters at the Summer Undergraduate Research Program successfully concluding their summer research working with Dr. Cherukumilli. Great job, Max and Daaniya!
August 2019
Another beautiful day on campus! Here’s the view from Red Square.
July 2019
The AIMS Lab takes a break from research to have some summer fun at Golden Gardens!
July 2019
Dr. Ray was awarded the University of Washington Royalty Research Fund which was supported by the Washington Research Fund!
June 2019
The lab is really busy this summer! In addition to Max and Daaniya, undergraduate volunteer Kaylie Dennehy has joined the lab this summer to conduct research with Yuemei
May 2019
We are very happy to be working with Daaniya Iyaz and Max Steiner this summer! Max and Daaniya received the CoMotion Mary Gates Innovation Scholars Internship to work with Dr. Katya Cherukumilli and Global Water Labs to optimize methods to treat metals in groundwater and wastewater.
April 2019
National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP)!! Jessica will receive 3 years of funding to support her PhD. Awesome job, Jessica!
March 2019
Dr. Cherukumilli presents her team’s proposed “Groundwater Quality Map App” as part of the 2019 WaterHackWeek. Katya managed a team of participants to design an map to map groundwater contaminant profiles in California using large data sets from the USGS. Great job, Katya!
March 2019
Next door, Dr. Cherukumilli has begun building column filters to examine bauxite ore fluoride remediation in groundwater.
February 2019
The lab has been stocked and it’s ready for research!
