William Tarpeh named 2025 MacArthur Fellow
William Tarpeh (M.S.’13, Ph.D.’17 Environmental Eng) was named a 2025 MacArthur Fellow. Often called a “genius grant,” the fellowship recognizes “talented individuals who have shown extraordinary originality and dedication in their creative pursuits and a marked capacity for self-direction.”
Tarpeh, an assistant professor of chemical engineering at Stanford University, is working to develop sustainable and practical methods to recover valuable chemical resources from wastewater. Among his many innovations, Tarpeh has developed electrochemical-based processes to convert nitrogen in urine waste streams into ammonia-based products, which can be used in fertilizer or in household cleaners and industrial chemical production. He also has demonstrated an electrocatalyst-in-a-box (ECaB) that recovers ammonia directly from municipal wastewater and is being tested with agricultural run-off in California farm fields.
Learn more: William Tarpeh awarded MacArthur ‘genius’ fellowship