Professor Sedlak’s research focuses on the long-term goal of developing cost-effective, safe, and sustainable systems to manage water resources.  His 2015 book Water 4.0 described the technical revolutions over the past 2,500 years that made it possible to quench the thirst of cities, control waterborne diseases and eliminate the pollutants that fouled urban waterways.  But a growing world population combined with decreasing fresh water resources means that we need to change fundamentally our relationship with water. Professor Sedlak will discuss the latest water innovations and some of the most promising ideas for realizing a fifth water revolution.

 

Of Water 4.0: The Past, Present, and Future of the World's Most Vital Resource (2015), Kirkus Reviews noted "Civilizations appeared without many things, including iron, the wheel, domestic animals or writing, but water was critical. Providing it has always taxed human ingenuity, writes Sedlak (Civil and Environmental Engineering/Univ. of California) in this chronicle of “the essential ingredient of life.”

 

David Sedlak is the Plato Malozemoff Professor in the Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering at UC Berkeley, Co-Director of the Berkeley Water Center and Deputy Director of the NSF engineering research center for Reinventing the Nation’s Urban Water Infrastructure (ReNUWIt). He is a member of the US National Academy of Engineering, recipient of the Clarke Prize for Excellence in Water Research and editor-in-chief of the American Chemical Society journal, Environmental Science & Technology.