LEAVING Atlanta in 1997, using her last dollars before the long trip home, Mona Naim picked up a book called Standard Handbook of Hazardous Waste Treatment and Disposal — light reading for the flight back to Egypt. The purchase sparked nearly two decades of experiments at Alexandria University that may eventually affect billions of lives.The research Naim began in 1997 culminated in an article published in August in the academic journal Water Science and Technology. In the article, a team of Egyptian researchers — Mona Naim, Abeer Moneer, Ahmed El-Shafei, and Mahmoud Elewa — described a simple and efficient new process for turning salt water into clean drinking water.In the weeks after its publication, news of the research drew headlines around the world. The team behind it has attracted less attention, but as a group of Egyptian scientists using a government grant to achieve outstanding results, their story serves as a model for what local researchers can accomplish when they are s...
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