Celebrating our PhD students on International Women's Day

This International Women’s Day we acknowledge the brilliant work by dedicated students and staff in the water community at UNSW Sydney. Their collective efforts are enabling better management of freshwater and marine resources through innovations in technology, medicine, law, science, urban design and engineering.  

Today we highlight the work of our inspiring PhD students; the future leaders in water stewardship and environmental protection. In particular:

• Philippa Higgins from the faculty of Engineering who is studying the effects of climate change on fresh water aquifers in small Pacific Islands;
• Eve Liu from the faculty of medicine for her work on the transfer of antibiotic resistant genes in wastewater from hospitals
• Alice Bleby from the faculty of law who is developing a legal approach for protecting the environment based on the rights of nature; 
• Behnaz Avazpour from the faculty of the Built Environment who is developing a framework for innovative designs to enhance water sensitivity in the semi-arid urban landscapes of drought-prone cities; 
• Nor Hawani Salikin from the faculty of Science who is working on understanding how molecular properties of the bacteria Pseudoalteromonas tunicata may be used to limit the spread of waterborne disease from from parasitic helminth worm infections; 
• Jing Jia from the faculty of Engineering who is working on the relationship between Chinese superblock development and ‘sponge city’ development – a green water management policy that promotes learning from nature; and
• Clare Bales for her technical innovations in the development of low energy groundwater desalination for remote communities.

We thank them and the other women and men working on their PhD’s for their hard work and dedication.

The Global Water Institute wishes everyone a wonderful International Women’s Day and believes that an equal world is an enabled world.