Omar Tantawi is a third-year PhD candidate in the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department at MIT. His research in the Plata Lab is aimed at improving our current understanding of the fundamental science that drives environmental plastic degradation. The ultimate goal of his work is to alter plastic fabrication to include environmental degradation as a design objective to implicitly prevent plastic waste accumulation in the Earth system and promote more sustainable global development.
Omar obtained his bachelor’s degree in Chemistry from the American University of Beirut (Lebanon) on a United States Agency for International Development (USAID) scholarship. Prior to starting his PhD, Omar received his Master’s in Environmental and Ecological Engineering at Purdue University (West Lafayette, IN) on a Fulbright Fellowship, where he worked on quantifying and understanding the temporal evolution of smartphones metal content. Outside of the lab, Omar is passionate about supporting students from underserved communities to achieve their full potentials.