David Sedlak Wins 2025 Environmental Science & Technology Achievement Award

David Sedlak receives a 2025 Outstanding Achievements in Environmental Science & Technology Award from Environmental Science & Technology

From the award announcement: 

“For his basic and translational research, leadership, and service to advance aquatic chemistry of contaminants of emerging concern, water reuse, and nature-based technologies for sustainable water resource management.”

“Professor David Sedlak is a global leader in environmental chemistry and engineering. His foundational basic and applied contributions have routinely examined aquatic contaminants of emerging concern, including transformation products, and treatment technologies in urban water and wastewater systems. Considering the palpable water resource scarcity issues facing many parts of the world, Prof. Sedlak’s pioneering work demonstrated decided foresight by embracing a One Water concept, which must be sustainably advanced at the global scale. His research has accelerated the scientific enterprise and improved the practice for water reuse. Within this broader context, Prof. Sedlak has made fundamentally important contributions to understanding the environmental chemistry of disinfection byproducts, particularly carcinogenic nitrosamines, which present diverse challenges for drinking water quality. His research on nature-based solutions, including constructed treatment and open water wetlands and horizontal levee systems, has similarly been important and continues to integrate within urban water infrastructure as part of a multiple-barrier approach and to treat reverse osmosis concentrates produced by potable reuse systems. To convey historic trajectories and emerging water challenges to a broad readership, Prof. Sedlak published Water 4.0: The Past, Present, and Future of the World’s Most Vital Resource (https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300212679/water-4-0/), which has also become a common resource in university classes.”

Sedlak is Leader of UCB SRP Project 4, In Situ Destruction of Halogenated Superfund Contaminants With Persulfate-Generated Radicals. He and his team have developed innovative approaches and tools to enhance ISCO. They published “Unwanted Loss of Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) During in Situ Chemical Oxidation Sample Preservation: Mechanisms and Solutions” in J Hazardous Materials recently (Kim et al., PMCID: 11501080).