WIT WELCOMES FACULTY MEMBERS: DR. FOZIA PARVEEN

Dr. Fozia Parveen is a postdoctoral fellow and an adjunct faculty at the Centre for Water Informatics and Technology (WIT), housed in the Syed Babar Ali School of Science and Engineering (SBASSE) at LUMS. Prior to this she completed her DPhil in Engineering Science from the University of Oxford. Her thesis was titled, Development of Lab-scale Forward Osmosis Membrane Bioreactor (FO-MBR) with Draw Solute Regeneration for Wastewater Treatment. She completed her bachelors and MS degree’s in Environmental Sciences from Fatima Jinnah Women University and National University of Science and Technology, respectively. Dr. Parveen’s lab research has focused on water and wastewater treatment, its microbiology and application. Her MS research was concerned with membrane bioreactors for wastewater treatment. 

At WIT, she is currently working on aquatic microplastic pollution in a way that is interdisciplinary and is also doing a small project with waste scavenging community in Lahore. She believes in taking the research from the lab to the field and bringing information from the field to research communities residing in academia.

She was the president of NUST environment club and took initiatives like, making the campus plastic free and introduced jute bags for use. Upon returning from Oxford University she continued with these initiatives locally. Her village, Khyber in upper Hunza was the first one to adopt the plastic ban in the region. Dr. Fozia Parveen previously worked with the Environment Protection Agency, Gilgit Baltistan as a volunteer to promote education and awareness regarding ecotourism in Northern areas of Pakistan.

Her DPhil project was shortlisted in the top ten teams in a business plan competition called ‘Thought for Food’. She was trained over a period of eight weeks to develop a business plan, business model canvas and pitched it to investors.

Together with her friends she has also started a discussion and awareness forum called ‘Meer-e-Karwan’ where she especially emphasises on environmental problems and women rights, amongst other issues.

Her publication can be found below:

• 2019 Parveen, F. Hankins, N. P. 2019. Comparative performance of nanofiltration and forward osmosis membranes in a lab-scale forward osmosis membrane bioreactor, Journal of Water Process Engineering, 28:1-9.
• Nawaz, M.S., Parveen, F., Khan, S. J., Hankins, N. P. 2019. Impact of osmotic backwashing, particle size distribution and feed-side cross-flow velocity on flux in the forward osmosis membrane bioreactor (FO- MBR), Journal of Water Process Engineering, 31: 100861
• 2016 Nawaz, M.S., Parveen, F., Gadelha, G., Khan, S. J., Wang, R. & Hankins, N.P. 2016. Reverse solute transport, microbial toxicity, membrane cleaning and flux of regenerated draw in the FO-MBR using a micellar draw solution. Desalination. 391:105-111
• 2013 Khan, S. J., Parveen, F., Ahmad, A., Hashmi, I. & Hankins, N. P. 2013. Performance Evaluation and Bacterial Characterization of Membrane Bioreactors. Bioresource Technology, 141: 2-7