Professor Recognized for Novel Approaches to Identifying Contaminants in Drinking Water

Agilent Technologies Inc. have recently announced that Shane Snyder, Ph.D., has received an Agilent Thought Leader Award in recognition of his influential research in water analysis, and the exploration of new approaches to determine the quality and safety of drinking water.

Dr. Snyder is a professor of Chemical and Environmental Engineering at the University of Arizona in Tucson. Dr. Snyder and his team are developing an end-to-end workflow for effect-directed analysis designed to identify and characterize emerging contaminants in water supplies. Their research will also create assays for determining the safety of wastewater reuse initiatives.

“Growing interest in recycling municipal wastewater for potable supplies drives the need for more comprehensive water characterization – particularly for as-yet unidentified chemical contaminants including treatment by-products,” said Dr. Snyder. “This Agilent Thought Leader Award will allow our team to develop further tools and human-relevant monitoring programs, that will increase public trust in potable water reuse projects.”

“Agilent Technologies is proud to grant an Agilent Thought Leader Award to Dr. Snyder. This award builds on our collaboration with a world-renowned scientist in the area of water treatment and reuse research,” said Tori Richmond, a director of Segment Marketing at Agilent and executive sponsor of this award. “Through our partnership with Dr. Snyder, we will be able to support further research into the identification and analysis of emerging contaminants and their degradation products during wastewater and potable reuse treatment. The results of this work will help ensure a clean and sustainable water supply for future generations.”

Dr. Snyder’s methods, which include gas and liquid chromatography in tandem with high-resolution, accurate-mass mass spectrometry, will now be supplemented by in vitro profiling using Agilent cell metabolism and genomics solutions.

Dr. Snyder is a member of the World Health Organization (WHO) Drinking Water Advisory Panel and also a Fellow of the International Water Association (IWA). Additionally, he serves on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Science Advisory Board Drinking Water Committee, and the U.S. EPA Board of Scientific Counselors Safe and Sustainable Water Resources Subcommittee. Dr. Snyder also serves as an editor-in-chief for the international Elsevier journal Chemosphere.

The Agilent Thought Leader Award Program promotes fundamental scientific advances by contributing financial support, products and expertise to the research of influential thought leaders in the life sciences, diagnostics and applied chemical markets.