Dr. Joanne Ogunah Profile
Name: Joanne Atieno Ogunah
Title/Qualification: BEd. Hons, MSc, PhD Chemistry (Maseno)
Position: Lecturer and Deputy Director of the Directorate of University Examinations
Department: Physical Sciences
School: SPAS
Area of Specialization: Physical/Analytical Chemistry
Contact Address: P.O Box 6-60100, EMBU
E-Mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Short Biography
Dr. Ogunah holds PhD and Master’s degree in Chemistry with expertise in experimental and applied chemistry both from Maseno University. Her research interests are on the fate and abstraction of xenobiotics from the environment; water purification technologies and where she has published in peer reviewed journals. She has attracted two grants that fostered research and partnership within her networks. She is a member of the Kenya Chemical Society and an alumnus of the DAAD.
Research Interests
Fate of xenobiotics in the environment
Xenobiotics in the form of drugs, pesticides, herbicides and other chemicals find their way to the soils and water through application and disposal. In the
environment they may be adsorbed, leached and or degraded. Their fate therefore is affected by a variety of the environment’s physicochemical parameters. Moreover, should they degrade then the degradation products may be more potent to the non target organisms. My interest is to determine the kinetics of transformation, the adsorption/desorption mechanisms and establish the degradation pathway of the xenobiotics in different media.
Water purification technologies
Current common water treatment technologies such as sedimentation, flocculation and ultrafiltration among others only focuses on removing solid and biotic
particles from the water. However, there are micro particles such as microplastics and other soluble chemicals such as heavy metals and pesticides that are not
abstracted by these common methods. My interest is to identify technologies such as use of porous materials, mycofiltration and membranes that are able to remove
microplastics, pesticides and heavy metals from the water.