Ivanaworked to bridge the gap between biological issues and engineering solutions in the field of wastewater treatment. Her focus lies within creating photocatalytic nanoparticles to enhance degradation of emerging contaminants in Advanced Oxidation processes. Ivana completed her undergraduate in Nanotechnology Engineering here at the University of Waterloo, enabling her to bring the forefronts of materials research into water treatment applications. Emerging contaminants, including microtoxins and pharmaceuticals, are suspended in MilliQ and Wastewater effluent, and photo-catalytically degraded using the highly studied photocatalyst P25, or a plasmonic photocatalyst, Silver-Zinc Oxide. Liquid Chromatography - Mass spectroscopy (LC-MS/MS) is used to asses pharmaceutical and microtoxin removal. By functionalizing the photocatalysts, Ivana aims to improve the reaction efficiency, to enable the cost-effective implementation of photocatalytic degradation in WWTPs. She is co-supervised by Norman Zhou, Mechanical Engineering.
