As the world’s increasing population and climate change place unprecedented stresses on Earth’s freshwater systems, microbiological and chemical pollutants in our water will create acute challenges for environmental engineers and public health scientists. The mission of our group is to improve detection methods for pollutants, elucidate their breakdown in natural and engineered systems, and develop mitigation strategies in water and wastewater treatment processes. We employ a variety of state-of-the-art techniques (e.g., spectroscopic, spectrometric, and genomic tools) in our research.
Our research focuses on biological processes in engineered systems. We study process technologies that harness the power of microorganisms to treat drinking water and wastewater and use cutting-edge molecular tools to characterize and optimize water quality process performance.