In a typical year, Reno, Nevada, receives just seven and a half inches of rain. For Samantha McBride, the newest faculty member in Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics, growing up in such an arid environment made clear the importance of water. “There’s a whole campaign for the Truckee River and Lake Tahoe,” she says. “People really take environmental challenges seriously because we have such limited water.”
As the William K. Gemmill Term Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering, McBride plans to probe the fascinating physics of interfacial phenomena, the world of interactions between two phases of matter, such as when a liquid meets a solid. “Many environmental challenges,” says McBride, “including desalination, boil down to interfacial processes.”
In desalination, the “interface” where these phenomena occur is a membrane, the pollution of which is known as “fouling.” Interfacial phenomena relate to virtually every aspect of water sustainability, from the persistence of microplastics in the water supply to new technologies to desalinate ocean water.
“Accumulation at the interface is a limiting factor in a lot of these processes,” says McBride. “I would love to come up with a technology that can change the face of water security, making sure we have clean water for everyone in the world at low cost without consuming too many nonrenewable resources.”
To that end, McBride’s lab brings together a range of scientific disciplines, including physics, chemistry, and materials science. “My work is very multidisciplinary,” she says.
Penn Engineering’s emphasis on collaboration is what drew McBride to the School in the first place. “I’ve already had the chance to interact with professors from four different departments, the Penn Water Center and the Vagelos Institute for Energy Science and Technology,” she says.
Where most of us look at water and see a simple liquid, McBride is entranced by the complex mathematics that govern the interactions between water and particles suspended in it, from microplastics to minerals. “I think it’s very beautiful,” she says. “It’s like a puzzle.”
This story is by Ian Scheffler. Read more at Penn Engineering Today.
