Agilent Early Career Professor Award

Dr. Adeyemi Adeleye
Winner of the 2024 Agilent Early Career Professor Award

2024 Focus: Contributions to environmental sustainability through development of green analytical technologies, methods, or laboratory working environments.

Dr. Adeleye is an Assistant Professor at Columbia University in the Department of Earth and Environmental Engineering. He is interested in using sustainable approaches to improve the health of the environment. Dr. Adeleye earned his B.S. from Obafemi Awolowo University, Nigeria in 2006. He then moved to the US where he completed a Master of Environmental Science & Management program at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB). His doctoral work at UCSB, advised by Dr. Arturo Keller, focused on understanding the fate of engineered nanomaterials in aquatic systems. After earning his Ph.D. in 2015, he performed postdoctoral research at the University of California Center for Environmental Implication of Nanotechnology at UCSB before joining the US Environmental Protection Agencya??s research lab in Narragansett, Rhode Island, as a National Research Council (NRC) postdoctoral research associate. In 2018, he became an Assistant Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of California, Irvine, before moving to Columbia University in 2024. Dr. Adeleyea??s research integrates environmental chemistry, environmental engineering, and material science to discover interfacial reactions that can lead to low-impact environmental remediation. His research group aims to develop a fundamental understanding of the reactions between pollutants and reactive surfaces in environmental matrices, and then apply the fundamental knowledge to remediate polluted environmental matrices. Recently, his group has focused on using engineered nanomaterials to control the mobility of heavy metals at the soil-plant interface. This research supports the effort of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) to tackle the widespread occurrence of toxic heavy metals in crop-based foods through the a??Closer-to-Zeroa?? Initiative. One of the many approaches being used is designing iron-based nanomaterials that can substantially decrease the mobility of arsenic and lead in agricultural soils without adversely impacting plant health or productivity. Dr. has received numerous awards and recognitions, including the NRC Research Associateship from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, the Hellman Fellowship Award, the C&ENa??s Talented 12 Award, and the Emerging Investigator Award from the Sustainable Nanotechnology Organization. His work has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the USDA, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

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