Maya Adelgren has a passion to engineer clean drinking water
Maya Adelgren, a first-year graduate student advised by Professors Raymond Hozalski and Timothy LaPara, is driven to engineer clean drinking water solutions.
Adelgren’s clear purpose has earned her a very prestigious fellowship through the National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP). The Fellowship provides Adelgren with three years of financial support, including an annual stipend and tuition support.
This award was not simply handed to her but required initiative and effort to develop her proposal. She submitted her proposed research project along with a personal statement about her goals and motivations. Her submission was evaluated against other submissions based on the intellectual merit and impact of her proposed research, and on her contributions so far. Adelgren has been involved in research since her undergraduate days, so she was able to include that experience along with her work at UMN.
Adelgren recalls, “I had heard about the program and wanted to give it a shot. I brought it up to my professors, Ray Hozalski and Tim LaPara. They worked with me to put together a proposal that I submitted in October. It was a little uncertain if awards were even going to be given this year with all the changes that have been happening, and then it was announced that NSF would cut the number of grants in half for this year. So, in April, when I learned I had been chosen, I was really grateful! It feels nice to be recognized.”
Because the fellowship was awarded to her as an individual (as all of these fellowships are), she will have more ability to shift her research focus as her project develops. “It is incredible to have the flexibility, the freedom to create the research I want to do, which not a lot of people get to do.”
Adelgren plans to continue the work she had begun with Hozalski and LaPara on opportunistic pathogens (OPs), such as Legionella pneumophila that can cause Legionnaires’ disease, in drinking water distribution systems. OPs do not come from fecal matter but are naturally occurring in water and soil. The bacteria can grow within drinking water distribution systems and can infect people when they inhale contaminated aerosols or tiny droplets of water containing OPs, which can occur while showering. It can be difficult to rid drinking water distribution system of these bacteria, but disinfectants help to eliminate these pathogens.
Hozalski, LaPara, and Adelgren have been looking at various drinking water systems across the country. They track which disinfectants are used and at what levels, and what levels of the pathogens remain. They have seen that in most cases, the presence of a disinfectant can be very helpful in preventing OPs from growing. However, disinfectants can produce byproducts that also have health impacts. So, both OPs and disinfection byproducts must be monitored and minimized.
When asked what set her proposal apart, Adelgren replied, “I am driven to address concerns and help people. I think that was a strong point in my proposal. One of my advisers in Engineers Without Borders said, “water is dignity.” I believe that! I have worked on a couple different projects that have shown me how water can affect so many people’s lives. One of the main reasons I am drawn to this work is because it is so much more than data and numbers. It is people’s lives and people’s dignity. Human dignity is inherent when you are working with water.”