Honors
In 2023, Tarpeh was named among "AIChE’s 35 Under 35" [11] and the "2023 Rising Stars in Environmental Research" by ACS Environmental Au, [12] and in 2018 among the "Forbes 30 under 30 - Science". [13] [14] In 2016, Tarpeh was named by NBC in its NBCBLK28, as one of 28 African American innovators under the age of 28. [15] [16] Tarpeh is a Cooke Young Scholar and College Scholar of the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation, [17] and he received the foundation's 2020 Quinn Prize. [10] [18] Tarpeh also won Jeopardy Kids Week at the age of twelve. [19]
In 2025, Tarpeh earned a MacArthur Fellowship. [2] [3] [20] Previously, he received a 2024 National Science Foundation CAREER Award, [21] a 2022 Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award, [22] and the 2023 Paul L. Busch Award, a $100,000 research prize presented by the Water Research Foundation. [23]
In 2024, Tarpeh gave a talk at the 2024 Stanford Reunion Homecoming. [24]
Research
Tarpeh conducts research in global sanitation in the field of development engineering, [25] to recover resources from wastewater, [14] turning waste chemicals into products such as fertilizers and disinfectants and cleaning the water in the process. [26] During his PhD work, he developed a method for creating fertilizer by extracting nitrogen from urine and combining it with water. [14] Tarpeh continues to engineer new chemical processes to extract nutrients from urine and is considered a burgeoning leader in his field. [27]
Tarpeh's projects include ammonia recovery from wastewater, as well as the removal of lithium from spent batteries and its reusal. [4] He develops resource recovery technologies to recycle nitrogen, sulfur, and phosphorus with minimal infrastructure and energy. [28] Tarpeh leads pilot projects in Kenya and California, in an effort to transform how communities deal with pollution, fertilizer shortages, and climate change. [29]
Tarpeh's work has been featured in short videos by the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation, [30] Interesting Engineering, [31] and the University of California, Berkeley. [32]
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