Heileen Hsu-Kim

Professor Heileen (Helen) Hsu-Kim is an environmental engineer who specializes in environmental aquatic chemistry and geochemistry. Her research tackles problems related to pollutant metals and the biogeochemical processes that alter their distribution in the natural and built environment. Her work strives to establish and use principles of geochemical speciation for understanding and predicting the persistence, mobility and bioavailability of metals and minerals in the environment and potential hazards to exposed populations. Her team uses these same approaches to study the extraction of metals from waste materials for valorization technologies.

Examples of ongoing research includes studies on toxins such as mercury, lead, arsenic and selenium in ecosystems and the built environment. She seeks to understand the risks of exposures to humans and biota while also identify pathways to reduce negative impacts caused by such exposures. Dr. Hsu-Kim also evaluates unconventional resources for critical metals such as rare earth elements and studies technologies for their extraction and production.

Her research employs multiple geochemical methods for element speciation and interfacial analysis, including mass spectrometry and X-ray spectroscopy. She develops functional measures of reactivity and bioavailability of contaminant metals, and techniques to probe interactions at solid, liquid and microbial interfaces.