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Associate Professor Wil Srubar has been nominated for the 2023

Srubar is part of the Department of Civil, Environmental and Architectural Engineering and the Material Science and Engineering Program at CU Boulder. His lab conducts major research into biomimetic and living materials that have the potential to drastically reduce environmental pollution caused by construction activities around the globe. 

Srubar joins a list of candidates – all under the age of 40 – working to advance environmental causes around the world. The roster includes leaders in fields such as sustainable design, wildlife law, shark conservation and carbon markets. In the coming months a committee will choose three finalists for the award. Then judges will select a winner to be announced at an Oct. 26 ceremony. Winners receive $100,000 and finalists take home $5,000 – made possible by a gift from the Anthony and Jeanne Pritzker Family Foundation.

Srubar said being included in such an impressive cohort of nominees is a true honor.

“For my living materials research and related entrepreneurial endeavors to be recognized in this way is both humbling and exhilarating,” he said. “Winning the award would bring world-renowned recognition and legitimacy to the idea that nature-based material solutions are critical to decarbonizing the construction industry and combatting the consequences of climate change.”

Srubar has been recognized for his research in a variety of venues recently. He was named to the  and was the American Ceramic Society’s Cements Division Early Career Award winner in 2023. Previously, he was selected as the BioEnvironmental Polymer Society Outstanding Young Scientist in 2021 and won a prestigious National Science Foundation CAREER award in 2020. To date, his laboratory has received over $12 million in sponsored research funding through the U.S. National Science Foundation, Air Force Research Laboratories, ARPA-E and DARPA’s Biological Technologies Office.

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Researchers at CU Boulder have developed a new membrane water filtration system based around air bubbles that can help address water scarcity issues around the world.

Membrane filters generally use pressure to force water through a sieve to separate out unwanted particles and contaminants. The new membrane system is unique in that it uses a tiny layer of air bubbles to distill the water rather than sieve it. This change makes the system more permeable and better at removing unwanted impurities than the common reverse osmosis systems working today.

The new technology is described in a recently published journal article in and the work on campus was led by Civil, Environmental and Architectural Engineering Assistant Professor Anthony Straub with PhD student Duong Nguyen contributing as first author.

Straub said his team’s membrane could be used in advanced water treatment systems and other applications.

“These can be utilized to purify water to a very high degree when it comes to desalination of seawater and in wastewater reuse efforts,” Straub said. “We also have ongoing work with NASA to use these membranes to recycle water during space exploration and research missions.”

Current state-of-the-art engineered membranes are all limited in their use by a universal trade-off where those with high water permeability also struggle to remove salt. That is, membranes that can process a high volume of water are also inherently limited in their ability to clean that water. 

“They are also vulnerable to degradation from chemicals used in water treatment,” Straub said. “So, there are a lot of advantages to pursuing this technology and possibly integrating it into existing treatment process.”

Nguyen is originally from the coastal area near Hanoi in Vietnam where maintaining clean water supplies is still a big challenge because of contamination from industrial activities. He said he has personally seen how a lack of efficient water treatment technologies and poor water infrastructure negatively impacted people in the area.

“A passion for both securing water resources and improving water quality for my community – and globally – is what led me to pursue a degree and research into water purification membranes at CU Boulder,” he said. “The university has a strong reputation in this field with many faculty that are the top researchers in water treatment and reuse, including my advisor professor Straub. I have learned a lot from him, both in conducting research and in terms of professional development during my PhD training here.”

Straub said the university has a strong history in water reuse research – primarily through the on campus and ongoing activity in the Environmental Engineering Program. He added that the team used the Colorado Shared Instrumentation in Nanofabrication and Characterization facility on campus to complete the highly interdisciplinary work.

“We have been trying to create this type of membrane for years,” he said. “We will now look at ways to scale it up and potentially integrate it into existing approaches to water treatment.”

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Eight faculty members from the College of Engineering and Applied Science have received CAREER Awards from the National Science Foundation in 2023. The total continues an impressive trend with the college, which had 12 in 2021 and six in 2022, said Dean Keith Molenaar.

"The University of Colorado Boulder has a research culture and infrastructure that provides new faculty with the opportunity to flourish," said Molenaar. "These seven faculty members are truly extraordinary, and I am elated with the well-deserved recognitions they are receiving. I look forward to seeing the impact of their work and supporting their growth as leaders in our community."

As of 2023, the College of Engineering and Applied Science has received over 100 NSF CAREER Awards. These awards — the most prestigious support of early-career faculty the NSF offers — provide approximately $500,000 over five years for those “who have the potential to serve as academic role models in research and education and to lead advances in the mission of their department or organization.”

Past CAREER winners from the college come from all six departments and a represent a wide range of research disciplines. Over the last five years, the college has achieved 74% growth in external research funding while also launching internally funded research teams that are advancing knowledge in the areas of resilient and sustainable infrastructure; engineering education and AI-augmented learning; autonomous systems; multi-functional materials; hypersonic vehicles; and quantum engineering.

Here’s a look at the projects from the winners in our college this year:

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