We sadly report the untimely passing of Dr. Katherine T. Peter (affectionately known as “Kathy”) on November 4, 2024, as a result of early onset colorectal cancer (EOCRC). During her all too short research career, Kathy worked on novel materials for water treatment and the development of advanced mass spectrometry tools for environmental characterization, treatment, and human health assessment. Here, those of us so touched and inspired by Kathy’s brilliance as a friend, collaborator, and researcher seek to recognize and communicate her scientific and personal accomplishments as we celebrate her intellectual legacy. Simply put, she was the very best of us...

...Kathy’s career started in the Department of Energy, Environmental and Chemical Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis. There, she conducted undergraduate research in the laboratory of Dr. John Fortner, broadly in the area of environmental nanotechnology. Her contributions led to her first peer-reviewed publication in ES&T Letters, exploring the photo-oxidation of hydrogenated fullerenes in water. (1) Kathy was an accomplished student, earning a perfect 4.0 GPA while attaining her Bachelor of Science in Chemical Engineering (valedictorian of the College of Engineering while double majoring in Spanish) and playing for the university softball team...

Kathy then pursued a Ph.D. in Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Iowa through support from the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship. At Iowa, Kathy continued her work on environmental nanotechnology, crafting her thesis around the application of electrospun nanofibers in point-of-use water treatment. Her work was motivated by the numerous challenges confronting Iowa’s private well owners, where over 300,000 vulnerable consumers fall outside of Safe Drinking Water Act protections and often need multifunctional, broad-spectrum purification technologies in a small device footprint...