The International Desalination Association has awarded its 2013 Channabasappa Scholarship to Leila Karimi, a PhD candidate at the Institute for Energy & the Environment, Chemical Engineering Department, New Mexico State University (NMSU).
The objective of this annual IDA Scholarship is to encourage engineers and scientists to further their education in subjects related to desalination and water reuse. The scholarship provides financial assistance to graduate students who have been accepted into a graduate program of doctoral studies and who intend to pursue a desalination and water reuse related research thesis.
The total maximum grant per student is US$ 10,000/calendar year.
Born in Iran, Karimi graduated as the outstanding student of secondary studies in 2000 and pre-university studies in 2001, and then was accepted to attend Sahand University of Technology in Tabriz, where she earned a BSc in Chemical Engineering in 2005 and a MSc in 2009.
After teaching undergraduate courses from 2009‑2011, she decided to pursue the doctoral program at NMSU because of its international leadership in the field of water treatment and the opportunity to work with distinguished researchers from academia, government and industry.
In 2011, Karimi began her research as a member of the team at NMSU. Her focus is on the selective removal of ions in an electrodialysis reversal process as one of the inland desalination technologies that is appropriate for brackish groundwater.
She has mentoring and teaching experience in addition to her research in the laboratory and has made several presentations at conferences, especially on brackish water desalination, and has been published in Water & Wastes Digest magazine.