For Susan Aitken, the answer to improving Earth’s environmental conditions is simple – use the environment itself.
Aitken’s research aims to understand how plants can help to decontaminate soil polluted with toxic heavy metals.
“Heavy metal contaminants resulting from industrial activity pollute water and soil, posing severe threats both to human health and the environment,” she said in an article last year. “Phytoremediation is a relatively new approach that involves the use of plants in the detoxification of contaminated soil. It is an environmentally-friendly and effective alternative to conventional remediation techniques.”
The high costs of traditional methods like excavation can be a deterrent to cleaning up polluted soil, Aitken said. In addition to being easy on the environment, phytoremediation is also a cheaper way to clean up polluted soil, she added, estimating the price of phytoremediation to be at least a 100-fold less.
“(It) will provide an economical and environmentally-friendly tool for the mining and manufacturing sectors to clean contaminated sites,” Aitken said.
An assistant professor of Biology at Carleton University, she has written or co-authored more than ten papers in different biochemistry publications.
A second stream in her studies is improving nutritional quality in varieties of crop plants. Another is looking at sulfur amino acid metabolism in humans, potentially leading to developing treatments for diseases like atherosclerosis (hardening of the arteries) and Down syndrome.
Aitken received the Petro-Canada Young Innovator Award earlier this year. The honour, valued at $10,000, was created in 1995 and has funded over 100 research projects across Canada.
“I am delighted to be awarded this year’s Petro-Canada Young Innovator Award,” said Aitken in an interview last month. “The funds from this award will allow me to purchase equipment that will significantly assist my research team, including graduate students at Carleton, in their work on this project.”
By: Laura Cummings