Former ROUTES Scholar Receives PEAK Experience Award to Continue Work with Project 4
In February, Northeastern College of Engineering undergraduate Alena Alexander was announced as a recipient of a PEAK Experience Summit Award from Northeastern University. With this award, she has been able to work with PROTECT’s Project 4 team as they research and develop sustainable, efficient water treatments.
Alena first started working with PROTECT in the summer of 2024 when she completed a co-op with the project as a ROUTES scholar under the mentorship of Project 4 lead Akram Alshawabkeh. As a scholar, she contributed to Project 4’s goal of developing portable water treatment technology for underserved communities by investigating the effect of pore size distribution in granular activated carbon cathodes on the adsorption and electrochemical removal of contaminants. With her Summit Award, Alena is continuing to study the relationship between pore structure and contaminant removal efficiency. She hopes that better understanding this association can help researchers optimize cathode design, which can then contribute to the development of an efficient water purification system to be used by communities including the PROTECT cohort. Alena is completing this work under the mentorship of Project 4 Research Scientist Fahad Ehsan along with additional support from Project 4 trainees.
The Project-Based Exploration for the Advancement of Knowledge (PEAK) Experience Awards are a series of grants designed to support undergraduate students at different points in their research projects, from early exploration to finalizing findings and discoveries. The PEAK Summit Award supports students “who are heading for the project pinnacle” by creating their own research questions and developing solutions to problems.