Ruggero Rossi, assistant professor of environmental health and engineering, works at the intersection of electrochemistry, microbiology, and material science to achieve a sustainable energy-water infrastructure and an environmentally sustainable production of chemicals.
His team studies and develops novel electrochemical technologies addressing the grand challenges in environmental engineering with a particular focus on identifying and overcoming mass-transport limitations. They seek to fill important knowledge gaps in the water-energy-food nexus and develop sustainable processes for the production of clean water, fertilizers, and energy. Specifically, they are interested in sustainable treatment of used water and recovery of energy and chemicals during treatment, reduction, and mitigation of the greenhouse gas emissions of the water infrastructure and the use of low-grade water sources for energy and hydrogen production.
Rossi has received multiple awards for his research. He was elected as a Toso Montanari fellow in 2011 and in 2012 and was the recipient of the Marco Polo fellowship in 2016. He received the International Society of Electrochemistry Prize for Green Electrochemistry and the International Society for Microbial Electrochemistry and Technology Innovation Award in 2022.
Rossi earned his BSc and MSc degrees in industrial chemistry from the University of Bologna and his PhD in biochemistry and biotechnological sciences from the same institution in 2017. Rossi completed his postdoctoral training at The Pennsylvania State University, working with Prof. Bruce Logan in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering where he was appointed assistant research professor in 2021. He joined the faculty in the Department of Environmental Health and Engineering in the Whiting School of Engineering in 2023.