From left to right: Seowon Cho, Hanwei Wang and Craig Butler from the University of Wisconsin-Madison present their work in 2023.
By Isabella Figueroa
Student researchers from Michigan State University and the University of Wisconsin are among the winners of an Environmental Protection Agency contest for innovations in sustainability.
Muhammad Rabnawaz, an associate professor of packaging at Michigan State, brainstorms with his team
The EPA established the People, Prosperity and the Planet Student Design Competition to support teams of undergraduate and graduate students working to develop solutions to environmental and public health challenges.
The latest round of grants, announced in September, provided around $100,000 each for teams that previously received up to $25,000 from the agency for promising projects.
Michigan State’s team is working to create more sustainable materials for disposable cups, takeout containers and other single-use items. Today many of those products are made with microplastics and per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, known as “forever chemicals” due to their extremely slow breakdown in the environment.
The team is developing fiber-based and paper packaging that works as well as plastic without using harmful substances. In phase one of the project the team created a new polymer for coating paper. With the new funding, they plan to reduce the thickness of that coating to bring down the cost.
It’s rewarding to work on a project with potential to make a real-world impact, said Syeda Hamdani, a research scholar at MSU. “The best feeling is that I’m going to actually help humans and come up with something that is sustainable,” she said.
Jayesh Mestry (left) and Syeda Hamdani from Michigan State present their work in 2023
Muhammad Rabnawaz, an associate professor of packaging who oversees the student team, said in an email that the idea would remain “an untested file on my laptop” were it not for EPA funding.
If this phase of the project is successful, the team plans to bring the technology to market, Rabnawaz said.
Muhammad Rabnawaz, an associate professor of packaging at Michigan State, brainstorms with his team.
At the University of Wisconsin-Madison, student researchers will use the EPA funds to continue developing a tool to help lower-income families quickly and easily test their water for lead.
Home lead tests cost around $35, said Haoran Wei, an assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering leading the Wisconsin team. “Which is not huge, but if you want to measure it frequently it adds up,” he said.
Wei’s team plans to create a more affordable test kit that he estimated will cost around $5. When a user mixes a water sample with chemicals provided in the kit, the water’s color will change depending on the concentration of lead it contains. The goal is to use smartphone cameras to analyze the samples.
Among the other grant recipients are students at Ball State University in Indiana for a project focused on removing microplastics from wastewater.