Nathalie Tufenkji earned the Ph.D. degree in Chemical and Environmental Engineering from Yale University in 2005. She 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. She works in the area of particle-surface interactions with applications in protection of water resources as well as the discovery of natural antimicrobials.
Professor Tufenkji was awarded the Early Career Research Excellence Award by the Faculty of Engineering at McGill University (2010), a Fulbright Scholar Award (2012), the YWCA Woman of Distinction Award in Science and Technology (2014), and the Hatch Innovation Award of the Canadian Society for Chemical Engineers (2016). She was elected to the College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists of the Royal Society of Canada in 2016.
Beyond her research and teaching roles, Professor 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 also serves on the editorial advisory boards of the journals Environmental Science and Technology, npj Clean Water, Water Research, Advances in Colloid and Interface Science, and Environmental Science: Nano.