From The University of Pittsburgh
4.30.24
Kara Henderson
One in three people lacks access to safe drinking water. The finite limits of this resource make the growing presence of arsenic in groundwater, which supports the basic daily needs of 2.5 billion people worldwide, a pressing threat.
“Arsenic contamination in water is a serious global issue but is a major concern of my country, Asian and developing countries, generally,” said Hassan Nawaz, a Pakistan-born environmentalist, exchange student and doctoral research scholar in the Pitt Swanson School of Engineering’s Sustainable Design Labs.
Nawaz and engineering associate professor David Sanchez are finding new ways to remove arsenic from water without the cost and harmful byproducts of traditional approaches like sedimentation, chemical precipitation and iron oxide filters.
Arsenic is a chemical element found in the earth’s crust. Though relatively harmless in small doses, its long-term presence in drinking water has been directly linked to cancer and other serious health problems. These issues are often exacerbated by industrial processes for developing textiles, glass, paper, ammunition and more.
Nawaz’s solution is to develop metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), three-dimensional grids of organic molecules and metals, to extract heavy metals from water. The team’s work is novel for both the materials it uses and how it can be put into action.
“Our approach, our material is innovative, especially because we are focusing simultaneously on heavy metal and PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances),” said Nawaz. To his and Sanchez’s knowledge, the MOFs are the first to combine treatment of heavy metals and PFAS in water. This work is a part of environmental health scientist and School of Public Health Assistant Professor Alison P. Sanders’ Rust to Resilience initiative, which recently received a Pitt Momentum Funds Scaling Grant to continue their research.
Conducting this work within the Sustainable Design Labs, recognized as a Pitt Green Lab for the team’s commitment to adopting best practices around reducing waste, reusing materials and recycling, means they are minimizing the environmental impact of their work.
“MOFs are a promising alternative due to their high surface area and ability to be tailored for specific pollutants like arsenic,” Nawaz said, nodding to the potential for their designs to be customized to target heavy metals like lead, chromium and cadmium as well as PFAS, or “forever chemicals,” which have been around since the 1950s in household items, packaging, clothing and more.
Their latest iteration of the MOF uses the rare earth metal lanthanum due to its adaptability to and potential for stronger interactions with targeted pollutants based on its unique electronic properties, an approach that proved effective in a 2023 publication.
“We tested it on arsenic, and it showed significant amounts of removal — over 90% removal for these heavy metals,” said Sanchez, who also serves as associate director for the Mascaro Center for Sustainable Innovation. “We got into it because it is rather new and scalable in terms of application. But the ultimate goal is to enable and improve human quality of life for communities suffering from environmental pollution.
Making an impact from Pittsburgh to Pakistan
Nawaz was inspired to study ways to address arsenic pollution during his upbringing in Pakistan, where the pollutant is an issue that affects around 60 million people. This designation came after researchers found that nearly two-thirds of groundwater samples collected in the country surpassed the WHO-recommended arsenic threshold of 10 micrograms per liter of water, with some readings reaching 20 times that amount.
Upon completing his coursework at the Government College University Faisalabad in Pakistan, Nawaz sought more resources to continue his work in the U.S. He applied for the Higher Education Commission of Pakistan’s International Research Support Initiative Program, which offers full-time doctoral students a research fellowship abroad. A requirement, Nawaz said, was to secure acceptance and a supervisor from a top-ranked university. He applied to ten schools, but having discovered Sanchez’s work online, said Pitt was his top choice.
The two met over Zoom to discuss Nawaz’s research and outline a plan. He arrived in Pittsburgh in 2023 and has secured additional funding through 2025. “I was very fortunate to connect with Dr. David,” he said.
Nawaz now plans to modify the design to increase the number of pollutants it can deal with. He dedicates eight hours each day in the lab during the week, and sometimes comes in on weekends. Time is of the essence, he said, as he is eager to bridge the gap between the research and communities that would benefit from practical application.
“Funds permitting, it would be helpful to collect more data on Pittsburgh’s water and samples from different industries,” he said, noting that his team has PFAS data on U.S. canals and rivers nationwide but would like to expand on the existing database for Pennsylvania. “I can check the water quality and apply the material against it.”
The city, he added, is ideal because it has three major rivers that intersect urban and rural landscapes, which can provide an authentic picture of the quality of the state’s water.
Ultimately, Nawaz and Sanchez envision deploying the MOFs in water treatment plants, industrial centers, superfund sites and communities facing environmental pollution. Even in this early phase, their work is sparking interest.
“We continue to publish our research and have had people from different countries reach out to us to request step-by-step guidance,” said Nawaz. “Collaboration will be essential to obtaining practical solutions and expanding our research [to ensure] we can customize our material designs for legacy and emerging contaminants.”
See the full article here.
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The University of Pittsburgh is a state-related research university, founded as the Pittsburgh Academy in 1787. Pitt is a member of The Association of American Universities, which comprises 71 preeminent doctorate-granting research institutions in North America, 69 in the U.S. and 2 in Canada.
The campus is situated adjacent to the flagship medical facilities of its closely affiliated University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) and its flagship hospital, UPMC Presbyterian, as well as the Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh, Schenley Park, and Carnegie Mellon University. The university also operates four undergraduate branch campuses in Western Pennsylvania, located in Bradford, Greensburg, Johnstown, and Titusville.
Pitt is classified among “R1: Doctoral Universities – Very high research activity”. It is the second-largest non-government employer in the Pittsburgh metropolitan area.
From research achievements to the quality of its academic programs, the University of Pittsburgh ranks among the best in higher education.
Faculty members have expanded knowledge in the humanities and sciences, earning such prestigious honors as the National Medal of Science, the MacArthur Foundation’s “genius” grant, the Lasker-DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award, and election to The National Academy of Sciences and The Institute of Medicine.
Pitt students have earned Rhodes, Goldwater, Marshall, and Truman Scholarships, among other highly competitive national and international scholarships.
Alumni have pioneered MRI and TV, won Nobels and Pulitzers, led corporations and universities, served in government and the military, conquered Hollywood and The New York Times bestsellers list, and won Super Bowls and NBA championships.
The Center for Measuring University Performance has ranked Pitt very high in the top tier of U.S. research universities nationwide.
U.S. News & World Report has ranked Pitt very high among public universities in the United States and among all national universities. Princeton Review placed Pitt among its Best Value Public Colleges, while Kiplinger rated Pitt the best value in Pennsylvania and very high nationally for out-of-state students among public universities. The Wall Street Journal/Times Higher Education college rankings of American universities ranked very highly overall, and in the Northeast.
In worldwide evaluations of universities, Newsweek ranked Pitt very high in its The Top 100 Global Universities. Pitt ranked very high worldwide in the Center for World University Rankings. Pitt is also ranked very high worldwide and in the U.S. in the Academic Ranking of World Universities. Pitt ranked very high globally in the QS World University Rankings. Pitt ranks very high in all universities in the world for the impact and performance of its scientific public publications according to the Performance Ranking of Scientific Papers for World Universities produced by the Higher Education Evaluation and Accreditation Council of Taiwan . Pitt ranks very highly among higher education research institutions worldwide according to SCImago Institutions Rankings World Report.
In his 1985 book, Public Ivies: A Guide to America’s Best Public Undergraduate Colleges and Universities, Richard Moll included the University of Pittsburgh as one of the Public Ivy “worthy runners-up.”
In addition to its academic rankings, Pitt has also been recognized for its positive campus atmosphere, with The Princeton Review rating Pitt as having a very high happy student body and very high in best quality of life in the nation.
Pitt’s law school is ranked very highly in the U.S. by U.S. News & World Report.
The University of Pittsburgh School of Social Work’s MSW program is ranked very highly in the U.S. by U.S. News & World Report.
Pitt students and faculty have regularly won national and international scholarships and fellowship awards, including Rhodes Scholarships and Marshall Scholarships. Pitt has been one of only nine universities, and the only public university, to claim both Rhodes and Marshall Scholars. Pitt undergraduates have also won Truman Scholarships, Udall Scholarships, Churchill Scholarships, Gates Cambridge Scholarships, Goldwater Scholarships, Boren Scholarships, and Mellon Humanities Fellowships.
Pitt is also a leading producer of Fulbright scholars, placing very highly among all universities for total number of student Fulbright scholars.
Pitt alumni have won awards such as the Nobel Peace Prize, the Nobel Prize in medicine, the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, the Shaw Prize in medicine, the Albany Prize in medicine, the Fritz Medal in engineering, the Templeton Prize, and the Grainger Challenge Prize for sustainability.
Pitt is a member of the Association of American Universities and has had as much as $1.0 billion in research and development expenditures, ranking very highly among all universities in the United States. Pitt ranked very highly in all universities in the world for the impact and performance of its scientific public publications, including in the top ten for clinical medicine, according to the Performance Ranking of Scientific Papers for World Universities produced by the Higher Education Evaluation and Accreditation Council of Taiwan. Pitt is also ranked very highly in the world based on Essential Science Indicators according to the Research Center for Chinese Science Evaluation of Wuhan University. Pitt places much emphasis on undergraduate research and has integrated such research experience as a key component of its undergraduate experience.
Pitt is a major center of biomedical research. Pitt has ranked very high in the nation in competitive peer-reviewed NIH funding allocations, and the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center ranked very highly among hospitals nationwide by USNews in 2013.
Pitt neighbors the campus of Carnegie Mellon University, and in some cases, buildings of the two universities are intermingled. This helps to facilitate a myriad of academic and research collaborations between the two schools, including such projects as the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center, the Pittsburgh Life Sciences Greenhouse, the Immune Modeling Center, the Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition, the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute, as well as the National Science Foundation-supported Pittsburgh Science of Learning Center. Further, the universities also offer multiple dual and joint degree programs such as the Medical Scientist Training Program, the Molecular Biophysics and Structural Biology Graduate Program, and the Law and Business Administration program. Some professors hold joint professorships between the two schools, and students at each university may take classes at the other (with appropriate approvals). Pitt students and faculty also have access to the CMU library system, as well as the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, through the Oakland Library Consortium. The two universities also co-host academic conferences, such as the 2012 Second Language Research Forum.
Student media
WPTS-FM is a non-commercial radio station owned by the University of Pittsburgh, and offers a mix of student-run programming. The station operates at 92.1 MHz with an ERP of 16 watts, and is licensed to Pittsburgh.
JURIST is the world’s only law-school-based, comprehensive, legal news and research service staffed by a mostly volunteer team of part-time law student reporters, editors and Web developers. It is led by law professor Bernard Hibbitts at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law.
The Pitt News is an independent, student-written, and student-managed newspaper for the university’s Oakland (main) campus. Founded in 1908, it is now published Monday through Friday during the school year and Wednesdays during the summer. It circulates 14,000 copies for each issue published.
The Pittiful News is an independent, student-founded, student-written, student-managed, and student-produced satirical and humor newspaper. It comes out on during the school year in print and throughout the entire calendar year online.
UPTV (University of Pittsburgh Television) is a student-managed, student-produced, closed-circuit television station. Students living in campus residence halls or university operated-housing can view programming on Channel 21.
Three Rivers Review and Collision are undergraduate, bi-annual, literary journals publishing both poetry and prose.
The Pittsburgh Undergraduate Review is a multidisciplinary journal showcasing undergraduate research.
Pitt Political Review is a student-created, student-written publication of the University Honors College. PPR, as it is called, provides a venue for serious discussion of politics and policy issues in a nonpartisan way.
Blackline is a student-created, student-written publication of the Black Action Society. Blackline features both news articles and creative pieces such as poetry to call attention to problems, programs, and activities that affect Black students at Pitt.
The Original Magazine is a nonprofit, semiannual arts and culture publication based at, and partially funded by, the University of Pittsburgh, that aims to both bring and publicize accessible art and creative writing to Pittsburgh.
The Pitt Maverick is an independent paper founded by conservative students.
Pitt Tonight is an American college late-night talk show on the University of Pittsburgh campus. The show premiered on December 14, 2015, and is produced entirely by students. It is the first large-scale late-night production on the school’s campus – consisting of more than 70 staff members – with its creator Jesse Irwin serving as the first host. The program is taped once per month in front of a live studio audience. The show has been nominated for two Mid-Atlantic Emmy Awards, and won one College Broadcasters Inc. award for Best General Entertainment Program.
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