Nathalie Tufenkji received her Bachelor’s degree in Chemical Engineering from McGill University in 1999 and went on to Yale University, where she earned the M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in Chemical and Environmental Engineering. Nathalie’s graduate research at Yale focused on contaminant transport and filtration in groundwater and riverbank environments. She received the American Water Works Association Academic Achievement Award for best doctoral dissertation in the field (2006), as well as the Becton Prize for Best Ph.D. dissertation in the Faculty of Engineering & Applied Science at Yale (2005).
Dr. Tufenkji returned to her alma mater as Assistant Professor in 2005 and is presently Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering at McGill University where she holds the Tier I Canada Research Chair in Biocolloids and Surfaces. Dr. Tufenkji leads a research group working in the area of (bio)colloid-surface interactions with applications in protection of water resources, engineering of biosensors and antimicrobial materials, and development of safe nanotechnology. Professor Tufenkji was awarded the Early Career Research Excellence Award by the Faculty of Engineering at McGill University (2010), a Fulbright Scholar Award for tenure at Harvard University (2012), an Excellence in Review Award from the journal Environmental Science and Technology (2012), and the YWCA Woman of Distinction Award in Science and Technology (2014). She was elected to the College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists of the Royal Society of Canada in 2016. In 2020, she received a Killam Research Fellowship and the Environment Division Research and Development Dima Award from the Chemical Institute of Canada. The same year, Dr. Tufenkji was elected to the Canadian Academy of Engineering and received the Award for the Support of Women in the Engineering Profession by Engineers Canada.
Beyond her research and teaching roles, Dr. Tufenkji also serves as Associate Director of the Brace Center for Water Resources Management at McGill and has co-chaired several major international conferences. She has also served on the editorial boards of the journals Environmental Science and Technology, npj Clean Water, Water Research, Colloids and Surfaces B, Advances in Colloid and Interface Science, Environmental Science: Nano and Frontiers in Chemical Engineering.
