A true globetrotter moves in: Meet Process Engineer Justin Borrison
Justin Borrison is an American Process Engineer whose work and sense of adventure have taken him across the world. Now, Justin has landed at NIRAS in Denmark, and we’ve met up with him to hear about globetrotting, the benefits of membranes, and why NIRAS, in his own words, is a ‘very chill’ place to work.
11 countries, 6 years, 7 companies and one international Master’s degree in environmental/chemical engineering with a focus on membranes with biological properties for water purification. If that’s not the recipe for a true globetrotter working in the name of sustainability, we don’t know what is!
Constantly traveling to wherever the search for new knowledge leads you is probably something many people dream of, but few pursue. Learning new things with a “let’s see how far we can take this” approach and a work ethic based on knowledge-sharing and full dedication to the task at hand has allowed Justin Borrison to see the world and build his specialty within a wide range of companies and through scientific collaborations.
Justin started in NIRAS’s Life Science Process Design team in February 2023 – and out of the many countries he’s visited and worked in, he chose NIRAS as the next step in his professional career. His travels have taken him all over the world and to Denmark twice, first for a better education, and second for a better workplace.
Another important factor was the possibility of working in a more work-life-friendly environment, where he could still apply his expertise in the creation and implementation of membranes for cleaning all sorts of wastewater, filtration, and proteins alongside some of the best experts in the business.
“I’ve worked in a lot of very different environments and different cultures, and coming to NIRAS in Denmark has allowed me to obtain a balance in my life that I have been lacking. Here, I’m working with some of the very best in the game, but the focus is just as much on how we work smarter and maintain a good work-life balance.”
A ”very chill” place to work
When Justin first moved to Denmark, it was for the sake of completing his education which originally took place at the Technical University of Munich but led him to the Technical University of Denmark as part of an international Master’s program. Working in Denmark wasn’t part of the plan, the focus was simply on getting the best possible education.
Justin’s journey would probably make even the most travel-prone of us dizzy. But in fact, Justin came to Denmark the second time because he wanted to travel a bit less, because, as he puts it: “when you travel that much, your vacations end up feeling like work, and that’s just not very fun.”
“The search for knowledge was what propelled me to travel as much as I did, but it’s great to find the “whole package” here and get some stability. And now, I can actually enjoy when traveling on vacation, which I really didn’t when my work was really travel-heavy.”
And the way Justin circled the map prior to coming to Denmark, it is no wonder if he was becoming a bit travel-weary:
The world at your feet
Justin grew up in Washington DC, from where he graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering in 2016. During his Bachelor he started working with protein extraction for the American multinational chemical company, DuPont. After working for DuPont and continuing his education, it wasn’t long before he was offered to do research on pump curves at Ruhr University in Germany, where he got the chance to specialise in the performance of pumps when exposed to different types of fluid. Later, he added another field of expertise to his portfolio, namely research on catalysts for natural gas (decreasing the amount of energy used for producing natural gas).
Completing his thesis on biomembranes for water purification with a Danish company (which was his first experience with Denmark and Danish culture), he went back to the U.S. working as a field engineer for Pall Water – a job which took him all across the U.S. map during COVID. Where most people remained stationary in those years, Justin was as mobile as you can get, traveling to customer sites from one end of the compass to the other. Ultimately, the needle pointed to Barcelona when he got an opportunity to explore the art of water purification.
From water membranes to blood plasma
The pursuit of knowledge can drive you far – and Justin’s pursuit of knowledge has definitely taken him places - but at some point, we need to feel grounded and make room for the need to balance things out. At NIRAS, Justin has achieved exactly that.
He’s already been involved in several projects, e.g. on the reuse of water from pharmaceutical plants back into production, where the task is to remove the chemicals from the water and make it reusable for production, which means that the water needs to be cleaner than drinking water. He’s also worked with filtering plasma out of the blood. There’s a plasma shortage and it’s going to make a tangible difference that there’s a new method that can filter up to 99% of plasma in comparison to approx. 50% before.
Lastly, Justin has been involved with cleaning PFAS out of drinking water in Copenhagen using membranes. When it comes to drinking water, clean is a broad term. Water is what you call reactive, and therefore, you want it clean to a level where it can still be drinkable/not unhealthy but not as clean that it reacts with your pipes and ruins them.
We’re excited to see where Justin’s journey with NIRAS will take him in terms of creating more sustainable solutions for our process industries!
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