The Waterloo Institute for Nanotechnology (WIN) is pleased to present a Distinguished Lecture by Prof. Rohit Karnik, the Abdul Latif Jameel Professor, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
Please join us on Tuesday, October 21, at 11:00 a.m. to hear Professor Karnik's lecture, "Atomically-Thin Membranes and Nanostructured Materials for Water Purification and Chemical Separations."
Where: QNC 1501
When: Tuesday, October 21, 2025 | 11:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.
About the lecture
Separation processes are integral to human civilization, playing a critical role in clean water, energy, manufacturing, health, and circularity. Membrane-based separations are attractive due to their modularity, simplicity, and energy efficiency; and improving their selectivity, efficiency, and chemical resistance, or reducing their costs is important to create a more sustainable future. In this talk, we will discuss our work on advancing three unconventional nanostructured membrane concepts. First, we present the development of the thinnest possible membranes from a continuous layer of one atom-thick graphene. Nanopores in graphene provide pathways for rapid and selective fluidic transport, which has potential for improving the efficiency, selectivity, and chemical resistance for a variety of membrane separations. Next, we describe ‘vapor-gap’ membranes that desalinate water by nearly isothermal evaporation and condensation across short hydrophobic nanopores, which can improve rejection of many contaminants and allow for more versatile fouling control. Third, we show that the sapwood of conifers can be used as natural, biodegradable, low-cost, and easily manufactured filters to remove microbes and turbidity from drinking water. These filters exploit the naturally-occurring membranes in the xylem tissue to remove microbes and present opportunities to create affordable and sustainable filters for household use or for agile distribution in emergencies. These nanostructured membrane concepts illustrate the interplay between material structure and transport and demonstrate potential to realize next-generation membranes for water purification and chemical separations to provide clean water and unlock industrial efficiency and materials circularity for a sustainable future.
About the speaker
Rohit Karnik is Abdul Latif Jameel Professor in Mechanical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he leads the Microfluidics and Nanofluidics Research Group. His research focuses on the physics of micro- and nanofluidic flows and the design of micro- and nanofluidic systems for applications in water, healthcare, energy, and environment. He also serves as Director of the Abdul Latif Jameel Water and Food Systems Lab (J-WAFS) at MIT and as Faculty Director of the New Engineering Education Transformation (NEET) program in the MIT School of Engineering. Professor Karnik obtained his B. Tech. degree from the Indian Institute of Technology at Bombay, and his PhD from the University of California at Berkeley. He joined the Department of Mechanical Engineering at MIT in 2007 after postdoctoral work in Chemical Engineering at MIT. Among other honors, he has received the National Science Foundation Career Award (2010), Keenan Award for Innovation in Undergraduate Education (2011), Department of Energy Early Career Award (2012), the Ruth and Joel Spira Award for Distinguished Teaching (2018), the Tata professorship (2021-2025), and the Office of Graduate Education Committed to Caring Award (2024).