Dr. Paola A. Baldaguez Medina, assistant professor at UPR Mayagüez Chemical Engineering Department, was awarded a $278,000 grant from the National Science Foundation for water desalination technology development. ^[1] Baldaguez Medina will conduct research at Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois during the summers of 2027 and 2028 as part of this grant project. ^[2] The funded project focuses on developing biomass-derived carbon electrodes for capacitive deionization desalination and critical material recovery. ^[3] The grant is awarded under the NSF EPSCoR Research Fellows Program, which supports early career faculty and collaborative research with national scientific centers. ^[4] Baldaguez Medina joined the UPR Mayagüez Chemical Engineering faculty in 2024, researching electrochemical water treatment technologies. ^[5]