Research Interests
Co-supervised by Dr. Norman Zhou in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Waterloo, Ivana’s research focused on the development and application of nanomaterials for water and wastewater remediation. Her work explored how photocatalytic nanoparticles could be functionalized to improve the removal of pharmaceuticals and other emerging contaminants from municipal wastewater effluent.
Building on her undergraduate training in Nanotechnology Engineering at the University of Waterloo, Ivana worked at the interface of materials science, environmental engineering, and aquatic chemistry. Her research examined photocatalytic degradation processes using conventional photocatalysts such as P25 titanium dioxide and plasmonic silver–zinc oxide nanomaterials synthesized through hydrothermal methods. A major focus of the work was understanding how nanoparticle functionalization and silver loading influenced photocatalytic efficiency.
Her studies also evaluated pharmaceutical removal under environmentally relevant conditions by comparing treatment efficiency in Milli-Q water and municipal wastewater effluent. Pharmaceuticals were isolated using solid phase extraction (SPE) and quantified using liquid chromatography–mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS). The research demonstrated that while photocatalytic degradation could rapidly remove pharmaceuticals in purified water, treatment efficiency was substantially reduced in complex wastewater matrices due to interference from organic matter.
Overall, her research highlighted both the potential and the practical limitations of nanoparticle-based photocatalytic treatment technologies for future municipal water and wastewater treatment applications.
