Dr. Karatum joined the U.A. Whitaker College of Engineering in the Fall 2019.
Dr. Karatum is an environmental engineer by training and specializes in water quality,
novel oil spill response technologies, and analytical characterization of wastewater
from oil and gas operations. He earned his undergraduate degree in Food Engineering
from Ege University in Izmir, Turkey. He worked on characterization of aroma and flavor
compounds. For his Master’s degree at Duke University, he worked on non-thermal plasma
for treatment of low concentration volatile organic compounds (VOCs). During his doctoral
work at Duke University and Yale University, he worked on the development of novel
materials such as aerogels for oil spill remediation and recovery. Additionally, he
has been involved in the development of interchangeable (nonpolar to polar) surfaces
(i.e., “smart materials”) in the context of water treatment technologies, and he has
conducted life cycle assessment (LCA) to asses economic and environmental feasibility
of these novel materials. After graduate school, Dr. Karatum worked as a postdoctoral
scholar at Virginia Tech, where he conducted research to characterize respiratory
droplets and aerosols. Before joining FGCU, Dr. Karatum worked for a scientific consulting
company, Exponent, in Los Angeles. At Exponent, his work focused on environmental
litigation cases. His research interests include water quality, aerogels, oil chemistry,
oil spill response, and flowback and produced water characterization from hydraulic
fracturing operations.
