Skyler Henry worked in Dr. Perreault’s lab for 10 weeks in the Summer of 2017 as part of the Nanotechnology-Enabled Water Treatment (NEWT) Research Experience for Undergraduates Program. A recent graduate from Glendale Community College with an Associates in Science, she is currently a third-year transfer student at UC Berkeley, majoring in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and is pursuing a career in biochemical research. During her time in Dr. Perreault’s lab, she sought to determine how the water recovery by a membrane distillation process was limited by the nucleation of inorganic species that block the pores of the membrane and increase the feed water’s resistance to flow. She worked to identify the recovery limit for a brackish oil and gas produced water by monitoring permeate flux during recovery, and to characterize the membrane fouling using scanning electron microscopy coupled with energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy, optical coherence tomography, and ion chromatography. Skyler hopes to one day pursue her own research in the fields of biochemistry, toxicology, nanotechnology, carcinogenesis, and chemical biology.
NEWT REU, currently PhD student at ASU