Congratulations to Sarah Pati on receiving an FWF-ASTRA Award!
From source to tap, Sarah Pati will trace the hidden journey of emerging sulfonate pollutants: we’re excited to announce that she has been awarded a prestigious FWF-ASTRA grant to investigate at CeMESS how these contaminants transform, persist, and impact drinking water quality.
Sulfonates are an important class of emerging pollutants that can bypass conventional water treatment and pose new risks to drinking water quality. This project will identify where sulfonate pollutants originate from and how they transform from source to tap. By experimentally testing how sunlight, microbial communities, and water treatment processes chemically alter sulfonates, this research will link chemical transformations to environmental persistence and the formation of harmful byproducts. A central innovation is a novel stable-isotope method that enables tracing the sources and transformation pathways of sulfonates in the environment. Coupled with controlled laboratory experiments and analyses of real water samples, the project will deliver new scientific insights and provide authorities with actionable evidence to prioritize interventions and guide drinking water monitoring. This project will also strengthen the intersection of environmental pollutant and microbiome research within CeMESS.
FWF/derKnopfdruecker
About Sarah Pati
Sarah earned her PhD from ETH Zurich in Switzerland and completed postdoctoral research at the University of Minnesota, United States, and the University of Basel, Switzerland. Since 2024, she has been an assistant professor at CeMESS. Her research investigates the occurrence and fate of organic pollutants in aquatic systems, with a particular focus on elucidating reaction mechanisms of photochemical and enzymatic transformation processes. With this project, she will build on her track record to develop novel stable-isotope methods that improve assessment of the environmental impact of anthropogenic compounds.
About FWF-ASTRA
The FWF-ASTRA programme supports outstanding early-career researchers in Austria with innovative projects that promise high scientific impact.