Dai elected chair for Gordon Research Conference on Water Disinfection, Byproducts and Health

By Alicia Maxwell

The GRC is a nonprofit organization that provides a platform for professionals to engage in discussion and present on frontier research in biological, chemical, physical and engineering sciences and their interfaces, according to their research.

“I’m grateful for the professional network I’ve developed through this GRC, and I felt honored to be nominated,” said Dai, who first became involved with the organization as a graduate student and served as an invited speaker in 2019.

When Dai ran for the 2025 vice chair position, she shared her GRC experience and her motivation to give back to the community, through fostering the growth of graduate students and postdocs, creating mentoring opportunities for participants from all career levels, and promoting interaction among academia, industry, and regulatory agencies.

After supporting the 2025 GRC organization as vice chair in the last two years, Dai is now looking forward to her new role as chair for the 2027 GRC, with preparations beginning in 2026. Working with her vice chair, Dai will invite speakers and discussion leaders conducting leading-edge work in the field and raise funds from federal, non-profit, and private organizations. She aims to be more proactive with private sector funding.

Diversity is valued within this GRC community, and Dai plans to carry that over. She aims to build a balanced program with speakers and discussion leaders of diverse career stages, geographies and demographics, and sectors. In collaboration with the vice chair, Dai plans to strengthen the program by incorporating public health perspectives with that of environmental engineering.

“I think the great thing is putting together the program and talking to the invited speakers. It really helps me feel even more connected with the field,” says Dai.

In 2022, she was awarded the Burges Endowed Visiting Professorship from the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Washington where she conducted research with collaborators during her sabbatical. She was awarded the prestigious National Science Foundation CAREER Award in 2017, given to early-career faculty who serve as academic role models and leaders in academia. She is the associate editor for the RSC journal Environmental Science: Water Research and Technology.

Her research interest is to apply environmental chemistry to address engineering challenges in water treatment and wastewater reuse and to understand the movement of anthropogenic contaminants in the natural environment.