Eric M. V. Hoek is a Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering, where his research brings together membrane technology, nanomaterials and electrochemistry for water, energy and environmental applications. Since 2019 he has been Faculty Director of the UCLA Sustainable LA Grand Challenge, a university-wide initiative working with partners across Los Angeles County toward 100% renewable energy, 100% local water and enhanced ecosystem health by 2050, and he is a member of UCLA’s Institute of the Environment and Sustainability and the California NanoSystems Institute.
Eric has repeatedly taken his research into industry. In 2005 he co-founded NanoH2O to commercialize the thin-film nanocomposite reverse osmosis membranes developed in his UCLA laboratory; the company was acquired by LG Chem in 2014. He served as Chief Executive Officer of Water Planet from 2014 to 2018 and has co-invented or founded other water-technology companies including PolyCera and IntelliFlux. His work spans more than 130 peer-reviewed publications and more than 70 patents filed worldwide; he is Editor-in-Chief of the Nature journal npj Clean Water, co-Editor-in-Chief of the Encyclopedia of Membrane Science and Technology, and the 2022 recipient of the National Water Research Institute’s Athalie Richardson Irvine Clarke Prize. He holds a PhD and an MS from Yale, an MS from UCLA and a BS from Penn State.
Eric brings this depth in membrane science and water-technology commercialization to OceanWell’s Advisory Board as the company scales its subsea reverse osmosis Water Farms from pilot to commercial deployment.
