Arup SenGupta wins new acclaim for improving global health

	Arup SenGupta's group has installed more than 200 arsenic-removing systems in eastern India.

Arup K. SenGupta has received another international honor for developing a technology that provides arsenic-free drinking water to more than 200,000 people living in villages in India.
The Association of University Technology Managers (AUTM) features SenGupta’s project and 22 others in its recently published “Better World Report 2009: Innovations from Academic Research That Positively Impact Global Health.” The four-page article on SenGupta is titled “Arsenic Removal: Fixing Drinking Water for Millions.” The report is distributed to federal and state government agencies and to companies around the world.
SenGupta, the P.C. Rossin Professor of civil and environmental engineering and also of chemical engineering, has spent more than a decade developing a technology that removes arsenic from drinking water. Called the Hybrid Anion Exchanger (HAIX), the patented product is the first polymer-based, arsenic-selective, anion-exchanging product to be commercialized.
Working with India’s Bengal Engineering and Science University, with assistance from the Colorado-based organization Water For People, SenGupta and his students have installed more than 200 arsenic-removal systems in the remote villages of eastern India near Bangladesh.
Last year’s “Better World Report” by AUTM celebrated the nation’s top 25 technology-collaboration stories and featured Lehigh Nanotech LLC, a company that markets nanoparticles that clean contaminated groundwater. That technology was invented by Wei-xian Zhang, professor of civil and environmental engineering.
Lehigh’s office of technology transfer facilitated the formation of Lehigh Nanotech and helped SenGupta obtain a grant from the National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance to install arsenic-removal systems in Cambodia.
To read the article on SenGupta in this year’s “Better World Report,” click here.
--Kurt Pfitzer