Service through science

Edward Apraku has a clear philosophy behind his research: If it doesn’t help people, what’s the point?

That conviction drove his work at Stanford. As a doctoral student in civil and environmental engineering, Apraku both studied wastewater-borne pollutants in the lab and partnered with communities fighting pollution in their neighborhoods.

A problem worth solving

Apraku’s commitment to environmental work traces back to his childhood. Born in Ghana and raised in Arizona, he grew up amid water scarcity and quality issues that steered him toward becoming an environmental engineer. “My parents really instilled in me that love of the environment,” he said.

At Stanford, Apraku focused on nitrogen, phosphates, and amino acids in wastewater systems. At high levels, these nutrients become toxins, trigger algal blooms, and kill aquatic life. Those nutrients are typically removed at wastewater treatment plants and discarded, but they could be reused for other purposes, such as to improve soil health and fertilize crops.

Working in the lab of Will Tarpeh, an associate professor of chemical engineering, Apraku explored the use of zinc and iron to selectively remove these nutrients from wastewater through absorption.

“If we can recover some of these nutrients, we decrease our dependence on energy-intensive processes we use to create things like reactive nitrogen right now,” Apraku said. “That could be huge in terms of environmental recovery and creating circularity,” he continued, referring to the concept of keeping resources in use rather than disposing of them as waste.

Reaching communities

For Apraku, having a positive impact also involves engaging with people affected by environmental issues. As the first graduate student representative on the national advisory board for the Haas Center for Public Service, he worked with Partnerships for Climate Justice in the Bay Area, which facilitates collaboration between Stanford students, faculty, and staff and Bay Area community leaders to help build equitable climate solutions. Through the program, Apraku helped a local nonprofit synthesize water quality data for an area of Menlo Park impacted disproportionately by environmental degradation.

“It was a really cool opportunity to apply research I had done,” he said. “And they were able to use it for grants, as well as present it to the city for improvements.”

That project and others revealed something important: There’s often a gap between what scientists discover and what communities can use. Researchers developing impressive technologies don’t always think about how those solutions could work in places without resources, Apraku said.

“We have to be able to talk about our research to non-experts who can actually do something with it,” he added.

This fall, Apraku will join the environmental toxins team of the Natural Resources Defense Council.