Abaynesh Yihdego Gebreyohannes receives honor for broad-based efforts
The European Federation of Chemical Engineering (EFCE) has announced that Abaynesh Yihdego Gebreyohannes is the winner of the 2018 Excellence Award in Membrane Engineering. Jointly awarded by the EFCE’s Section on Membrane Engineering and the European Membrane Society (EMS), the honor recognizes an outstanding PhD thesis related to membrane engineering. She received the award in mid-July during the Euromembrane 2018 Conference in Valencia, Spain.Now a postdoctoral researcher at the Catholic University (KU) of Leuven, Belgium, Gebreyohannes won for her thesis on an integrated process for enhancing the value of wastewater, which the judges praised for its breadth and scientific impact. The work covered a broad area, including hydrodynamic and kinetic characterization of bioreactors, study of fouling phenomena, membrane preparation (including the use of magnetic/super-paramagnetic properties) and characterization, bio-hybridization for tackling fouling, the study of forward osmosis and the recovery of high added value compounds from wastewater.
For her PhD, she studied at the University of Calabria, Italy, the University of Paul Sabatier, Toulouse, France, as well as KU Leuven.
