Jian Ren is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Connecticut, where she works with Professor Jeffrey McCutcheon in the Department of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering. She received her bachelor degree in Polymer Materials Science & Engineering from Sichuan University, China, in 2011. Her research interest at UConn is to develop and optimize thin film composite hollow fiber membranes for forward osmosis using experimental and computational methods. She has published four first-author papers in peer-reviewed journals and co-authored three papers with fellows from various disciplines. Her accomplishments have been recognized by others as she has received a number of awards, including the North American Membrane Society (NAMS) Student Fellowship Award in 2016, a fellowship from UConn-FEI Center for Advanced Microscopy and Materials Analysis in 2015 and General Electric Graduate Fellowship for Innovation in 2014. She also received a number of poster awards from various scientific conferences and symposiums. In the future, she sees herself as a research scientist applying her experience and skills in membrane science to address global water stress problems.