News: Welcome to three PhD Students
With the beginning of 2022, our first three PhD students started their journey with us. They will undertake their research in Sub-Saharan Africa to look at plastics recycling, open trash burning, and biogas failure. A warm welcome to Lin, Saloni, and Jonathan!
Lin Boynton - High Value Plastics Recycling
Lin is a scientist passionate about using art and design to evolve the way people think, work, and communicate.
Recently, Lin worked to develop partnerships and coordinate research with industry at a sustainability startup, Indigo, after she graduated from ETH Zurich with her MSc in biogeochemistry in 2020. Before ETH Zurich, she conducted research that leveraged synthetic biology to develop tools for the environmental sciences at Rice University and studied geophysical science at the University of Chicago. Now, Lin will spend her PhD working in collaboration with both formal and informal recyclers to develop low-cost methods to recycle plastics and subsequently produce high-value products with this material in Malawi. Someone who is constantly involved with side projects, there is a good chance you’ll find Lin in the new Student Project House makerspace in ETH Zentrum working with Precious Plastic or brainstorming intersections between art and science.
Saloni Vijay - Open Trash Burning
Saloni's research aims to evaluate the extent, markers, and health impacts of open trash burning.
She is involved in developing and testing monitoring protocols to estimate emissions from open trash burning. Saloni calls herself an artist, but she is not a singer or a painter. She is a researcher passionate about air pollution-related research. It is an art as per her - the art of implementing interdisciplinary knowledge to identify novel economic and socially feasible solutions for the problem of air pollution. Before joining Global Health Engineering, Saloni did her Master's at ETH Zurich in Environmental Engineering and Bachelors at the Indian Institute of Technology, Dhanbad. Before her Masters, she worked as a manager environment at Tata Steel, Jamshedpur, where she was responsible for air quality data availability and analysis. Apart from research, she loves to dance and play harmonica.
Jonathan Olal Ogwang - Biogas Failure in Sub-Saharan Africa
Jonathan is a Civil Engineer whose skills, experience and passion centre on managing waste, water and renewable energy.
Most of Jonathan’s academic and professional work has focused on biogas provision in South Africa: as an engineer, researcher, independent biogas provider, and project manager. The title of his doctoral project is “How biogas failed to light up a continent: why the most promising technology never spread across Africa.” The project aims to understand the technical, economic, and socio-political reasons for low biogas uptake within Sub-Saharan Africa. The work will provide evidence for, and quantify the impacts of, biogas failure, in South Africa and Malawi. The goal is to improve the design, targeting, and training related to biogas on the continent.