Current Research Interests
Drinking Water Treatment
- Chemical
disinfection processes; especially their kinetics against microorganisms
and methods for design and scaleup
- Inactivation
of emerging pathogens by disinfectants
- Novel kinetic
models for disinfection processes and process control
- Use of computational
fluid dynamics for process modeling
Bioterrorism
- Assessment
of risks from exposures to deliberately released agents (e.g., anthrax)
- Engineering
analysis and optimization of chemical decontamination schemes
- Appropriate
sensing equipment for water utilities to monitor deliberate contamination
Risk Assessment
- Microbiological
risks associated with diverse exposures
- pathogens
in drinking water and recreational waters
- pathogens
in biosolids (sludges)
- pathogens
in food (including E. coli O157:H7, Campylobacteria and Listeria)
- risks
from personal household exposures, and prevention using anti-microbial
agents
- Chemical Mixtures
- development
of dose-response models for mixtures of agents
- Fundamental
methodology
Current Major Projects
- Center for Advancing Microbial Risk Assessment (CAMRA):
This is a 5-year $10 million project jointly funded by the US
Department of Homeland Security and the US Environmental Protection
Agency. I am co-Director of this center, which involves 6
universities, led by Michigan State University. The CAMRA home
page is here.
- Collaborative Large-scale Engineering Analysis Network for
Environmental Research (CLEANER): I am co-PI of this effort funded by
the National Science Foundation to develop a network of field
facilities to advance our knowledge of the fundamental science and
engineering of water quality and quantity. The Project is headed
by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the web site is here.
- DeVaWaSte (Delaware Valley Water Source Tracking Effort).
With funding from the Philadelphia Water Department, we are
developing a library of microbial strains and their phenotypic and
genotypic qualities in order to establish a database for use in
determining sources of pollution (no web site yet for this).
- Working with a group of colleagues, we have received funding
for a program of PhD fellowships from the US Department of Education on
"Educating Rennaissance Engineers". More information on this
initiative can be found here.
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