Junior environmental science and chemistry major Alisa Pokazanyeva has been a student researcher at the Water Institute since the fall of 2024, splitting her time between implementation and stakeholder mapping and lab work.

On the mapping side, Pokazanyeva’s team tackled the big picture.

“What we’re basically doing is looking at all the players involved in drinking water in Ghana,” she said.

Pokazanyeva specifically researched NGOs involved in Ghana’s drinking water sector, using web surfing and AI tools to gather information before compiling it into Excel. In her analysis, she examined what level of involvement various organizations have in the issue of toxic metal contamination and remediation while contributing to the greater mapping project.

“I got really good at finding the articles I needed through web surfing, like using the right key words and sorting through the ones that were more relevant to me,” Pokazanyeva said.

In the Water Institute’s lead testing lab, Pokazanyeva took a narrower approach as she and other students used X-ray fluorescence (XRF) tools to determine lead concentration in water system parts from Uganda. Together, they created posters to present at the 26th Annual Undergraduate Research Symposium. Pokazanyeva hopes to dive deeper into XRF work, as well as present at future conferences.

“It was one of the first research posters that I’ve made and one of the first research projects that I’ve done,” she said. “I loved it.”

Pokazanyeva feels that her experiences at the Water Institute have expanded her professional horizons by giving her multiple perspectives on research work.

“It helped me see what I like doing, which is what I want to do at Carolina: explore what I want to do as a future career,” she said. “My time at the Water Institute has been very helpful in seeing if I like being at a desk more or working with lab equipment and testing hypotheses.”