Professor F. Dilek Sanin received her PhD from Duke University in USA in 1996 from Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering.  She is currently working in the Department of Environmental Engineering at Middle East Technical University in Turkey as a full-time faculty. Her current research covers microplastics and micropollutants in sludge treatment system, especially in sludge digestion process. Earlier she conducted work on the fate of nonylphenols, PCBs and other chemicals during sludge digestion. She is currently working on microplastics in sludge treatment process; particularly in sludge disintegration and subsequent digestion processes. Her research examines the fate of different microplastics, as well as the leaking additives from plastics, many of them considered as micropollutants. She is also investigating the effect of disintegration and digestion processes on microplastic degradation. Earlier, she was involved in projects conducting pioneering field work on beneficial use of sludge in land application and in energy recovery working with full scale cement factories as well as thermic power plants in Turkey.       

Dr. Sanin is the co-author of one international book on sludge engineering and over 70 research articles published in peer reviewed journals. She was invited as keynote speaker to overseas for several conferences on sludge management and has many national and international conference presentations made. She has more than 4000 citations made to her work. Dr. Sanin is serving as an executive board member at International Water Association (IWA) Specialist Group on Sludge Management. Between the years 2007 and 2019, she acted in the editorial board of Water Science and Technology, which is one of the journals of IWA. Professor Sanin also acted as Vice Dean for the School of Engineering at Middle East Technical University between the years of 2015-2016 and Vice President of her university between the years 2016-2019.