A UWindsor adjunct professor who helped Windsor produce some of the best-tasting water in the province will be the first Canadian president of an international scientific organization dedicated to ozone research.
On January 1, 2018, Saad Y. Jasim will begin a two-year term as president-elect of the International Ozone Association, thereafter taking up his two-year term as president. The association formed in 1973 to research and promote technologies on ozone and related compounds.
“It will be my duty to provide education and knowledge to different sectors in the world and make sure that knowledge transfer is the aim of our work,” says Dr. Jasim, who has served as an adjunct professor in the Faculty of Engineering since 1996. “I would like to make a difference. That is what I believe I was able to do in places like Windsor and Walkerton, Ontario.”
Jasim introduced ozone to drinking water in Windsor in 2001 when he served as the Windsor Utilities Commission’s director of water quality and production. Since then, the City of Windsor has repeatedly won Best Tasting Water in a competition organized by the Ontario Water Works Association. In 2004, Jasim designed an ozone system in Leamington for a 14-acre greenhouse, recycling more than 25,000 gallons of discharged water.
“I’m looking forward to leading a team that works to solve many issues that impact human health,” says the Windsorite, who currently works as manager of utilities for the City of White Rock in British Columbia.
As an adjunct professor, Jasim supervises undergraduate and graduate students in UWindsor’s civil and environmental engineering department. He has provided the university $125,000 in grants for research, more than $500,000 in in-kind contributions and helped secure $30,000 in federal funding in support of a study on the “Windsor hum.”
Jasim says one of the biggest ozone-related issues facing society today is the presence of chemicals of emerging concern — pharmaceuticals, personal care products and endocrine disrupting compounds — discharged from human activities and farms to our water sources.
“Ozone and ozone-based advanced oxidation processes can oxidize and eliminate the danger of these harmful compounds,” he says. “Cyanotoxins from algal bloom is another serious matter facing water supplies. Lake Erie is a good example and the City of Toledo, which decided to implement ozone for their drinking water system to mitigate the impact of cyanotoxins.”
Jasim is a member of the International Ozone Association Board of Directors and former president of the International Ozone Association-Pan American Group. In 2010, Jasim served as president of the Ontario Water Works Association section of the American Water Works Association.