Mackenzie Anderson, an undergraduate researcher in the Kaner group, received the Best Student Poster Award at the AWWA/AMTA Membrane Technology Conference.
Anderson received an American Membrane Technology Association (AMTA) Affordable Desalination Collaboration (ADC) fellowship and as a result had the opportunity to present at the February 2017 Membrane Technology conference in Long Beach at which she received the best student poster presentation award for her poster.
The UCLA Chemistry and Materials Science major has been conducting research in UCLA inorganic chemistry professor Dr. Richard Kaner‘s group since 2015. Her award winning poster (below) is titled “Antifouling properties of ultrafiltration membranes modified with perfluorophenylazide molecules for use in membrane bioreactors”.
After graduating from high school in 2013, Anderson attended community college at Pasadena City College and became involved in the American Chemical Society (ACS) student chapter leading the elementary school outreach program. Interested in a career in research, she pursued an internship at Oak Crest Institute of Science doing field work and analytical chemistry pertaining to environmental metabolomic chemistry. She transferred to UCLA in fall 2015, drawn to the interdisciplinary Chemistry and Materials Science Program and the many labs doing interdisciplinary research. Anderson joined Kaner’s lab in fall of 2015 and began studying anti-fouling surface treatments for reverse osmosis and forward osmosis membranes winter 2016. Most recently she has been optimizing novel membrane fabrication techniques designed in the Kaner lab and using them to develop a chlorine tolerant desalination membrane. She intends to begin the Ph.D. program in chemistry at UCLA this summer and will hopefully continue doing fundamental and applied research related to aqueous and non-aqueous separations.
Anderson’s poster which won the Best Student Poster award at the Membrane Technology Conference in February 2017. Click on the image to view a PDF version of poster.
To learn more about the Kaner lab’s research, visit the group’s website.
