Over the past decades, the monolithic aerogels have been broadly investigated and considered as a promising candidate for the application in the field of water purification. The main advantage of monolithic aerogels lies in their large specific surface area due to the hierarchical porous structure and in their tunable physical form enabling simple use/manipulation in a variety of applications. The challenge we would like to face within the proposed project is to combine aerogel-like materials with hierarchically porous carbon monoliths, and through surface-modifications get the new kind of composite materials with multiple and synergic functionality ? adsorption, photocatalytic ability, and antimicrobial activity.