Environmental Science: Water Research & Technology blog

Kevin Bisceglia is an Assistant Professor of Chemistry at Hofstra University. He earned a B.S. and M.E. in Environmental Engineering from Manhattan College, and a Ph.D. in Environmental Engineering and Chemistry from Johns Hopkins University. His research interests include environmental analytical chemistry, water quality, and chemical fate and transport in the built environment.

Nicole Fahrenfeld is an Assistant Professor in Civil and Environmental Engineering at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. She received her Ph.D. in Civil Engineering with a concentration in Environmental and Water Resources Engineering from Virginia Tech. She earned her B.S. in Environmental Engineering from Johns Hopkins University and M.S. in Environmental Engineering and Science from Clemson University. Her research interests include pathogen fate and transport, microbial source tracking, bioremediation, and emerging contaminants.

Dr. Xin Yang is now a professor at the School of Environmental Science and Engineering at Sun Yat-sen University. She received a B.S. in Environmental Science from Nankai University in 2002 and obtained her M.Phil. and Ph.D. degree in Environmental Engineering from the Hong Kong University of Science & Technology at 2004 and 2007, respectively. She was a postdoctoral fellow, working with Prof. Philip C. Singer at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her research focuses on the formation mechanisms and control strategies of disinfection byproducts in water treatment and the fate of emerging micropollutants in aqueous environments.

Read Xin’s Emerging Investigators article ‘disinfection by-products in mixed chlorine dioxide and chlorine water treatment’.

– How has your research evolved from your first to your most recent article?
My first research article was on disinfection byproducts formation during chlorination during my MPhi study at the HKUST. My current paper is also on disinfection byproducts, but from chlorine dioxide disinfection. Over the years, my research has been focused on disinfection and the byproducts formation with expansion toward emerging contaminants, such as pharmaceuticals and personal care products and persistent organic pollutants. My research has always aimed at drinking water safety.

– What aspect of your work are you most excited about at the moment?
The most exciting thing is to bridge the knowledge or results from the laboratory work with the real application. As my research has been focusing on drinking water treatment, we have good connections with water companies serving drinking water. It is great to apply what have learned from the laboratory work to guide the real application in water treatment. This is not easy, but we are trying.

– What would be the ideal ratio of chlorine dioxide:chlorine for water treatment?
From the tests, we find that the presence of some chlorine in chlorine dioxide solution may be effective in control certain groups of disinfection byproducts. It is difficult to give an ideal ratio as the water qualities vary. Meanwhile, the valuation of the formation of disinfection byproducts is just one aspect of the mixing solution, the other aspects such as inactivation capability may also be considered for further study.

– What do you find most challenging about your research?
I am working on pollutants or products with trace concentrations and the instruments such as GC-MS/MS and LC-MS/MS are often used. As the exploration of the reaction pathway is often one major objective, the mass spectral analysis from tons of peaks obtained from MS is very challenging.

– In which upcoming conference or events may our readers meet you?
I will be attending the Gordon Conference on Drinking Water Disinfection By-Products in July 2017 in South Hadley, MA, USA. The other conferences I often attend are the International Water Association conferences.

– Which profession would you choose if you were not a scientist?
I have been enjoying so much as a teacher and researcher in the university. If I had not gone into science, I would like to be an engineer.

– Can you share one piece of career-related advice or wisdom with other early career scientists?
Work on something that needs to be worked on. Research is not just paper publication. It will be very exciting and important to solve real-application problems.

Christopher M. Sales is a Tenure-Track Assistant Professor in the Civil, Architectural, and Environmental Engineering Department of Drexel University. He is an environmental engineer with research interests in molecular environmental microbiology related to the biodegradation of environmental contaminants and biotechnologies for energy and resource recovery from waste. His research group, who you can follow on twitter @SalesLaboratory, applies a combination of high-throughput and advanced molecular biology, analytical chemistry, and bioinformatics techniques to study microbial systems in natural and engineered environments.

Christopher received his Ph.D  in Civil and Environmental Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley, in 2012. His dissertation focusing on the functional genomics of the biodegradation of the emerging water contaminants, 1,4-dioxane and N-nitrosodimethylamine (NDMA). Prior to this, he worked as a post-doctoral researcher with Dean Joseph B. Hughes in the Civil, Architectural, and Environmental Engineering Department at Drexel University concentrated on the bioremediation of soils contaminated with nitroaromatric compounds, the environmental impacts of hydraulic fracturing in the Marcellus Shale, and the development of combined algae-bacteria biotechnologies for the conversion of wastes to energy and valuable products.

Read Chris’ Emerging Investigators article ‘untangling the microbial ecosystem and kinetics in a nitrogen removing photosynthetic high density bioreactor’.

– How has your research evolved from your first to your most recent article?
This most recent article in ES:WR&T blends together aspects of research that I did as an undergraduate and then as a doctoral student. As an undergraduate at the University of Pennsylvania, I performed research in the laboratory of Wen Kang Shieh (who is a co-author on this most recent article) that mainly focused on the design and kinetics of bioreactors for wastewater treatment. Through this undergraduate research, I was fortunate enough to publish a manuscript on the performance of a novel continuous bioreactor system that had high mean cell residence times without a biomass-liquid separation unit (see DOI:10.1016/j.watres.2006.01.043). While I knew microbes were involved in the treatment of synthetic wastewater in the bioreactors that I operated as an undergraduate, I was not able to fully grasp or appreciate–at that time–the complex microbial processes responsible for removing pollutants from wastewater in these systems. This undergraduate research experience propelled me on a journey to pursuing a graduate degree with Lisa Alvarez-Cohen at the University of California at Berkeley, where I applied functional genomics to understand microbial degradation of environmental contaminants.  This recent article on untangling the microbial ecology and kinetics in a nitrogen removing photosynthetic bioreactor of algae and bacteria showcases my ambitions as an Assistant Professor at Drexel University, where I am aiming to utilize molecular biology techniques, such as high-throughput genomic sequencing, to shed light on the microbial processes that dictate the function and performance of environmental biological processes in order to inform how we design and engineer them.

– What aspect of your work are you most excited about at the moment?
The most exciting–and also the most daunting and challenging–aspect of incorporating meta-omics and high-throughput chemical techniques to studying the kinetics and microbiology of environmental biological processes is the collection, handling, and analysis of such large datasets. This influx of data has the potential to vastly improve our understanding and ability to engineer biological processes but realization of this potential will depend largely on advances in data sciences and computational modeling to analyze the large amounts of high-dimensional data and draw meaningful relationships from these system within an engineering context.

– What do you see as the biggest benefit of using 3D visualization methods for water research?
The 3D visualization method gave us a new perspective, beyond single-variate regressions, to determine how more than one predictor variables could interact to affect the performance of a system. The 3D visualization methods will allow water researchers to examine how two predictor variables could work in tandem to affect the performance of a treatment process.

– What is the most useful application for these membranes?
With its enhanced removal of organic compounds, this membrane can be potentially used for wastewater reuse, as wastewater often contains harmful organic contaminants, such as pharmaceuticals and personal care products, and endocrine disrupting compounds.

– In which upcoming conference or events may our readers meet you?
I will be at the upcoming 16th International Symposium for Microbial Ecology (ISME) in Montreal, Canada from August 21-26, 2016 with my PhD student and co-author on this recent article in ES:WR&T, Jacob Price.

– Which profession would you choose if you were not a scientist?
I love cooking and being in a kitchen, so I’d say a chef.

– Can you share one piece of career-related advice or wisdom with other early career scientists?
Surround yourself with a strong support system of peers and mentors–they will help you gain confidence to navigate through difficult times and will always be there to champion and celebrate your successes.

Baoxia Mi is an assistant professor in the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department at the University of California, Berkeley. She received BS and MS from Tianjin University in China, Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and a postdoctoral training at Yale University, all in environmental engineering.  Prior to joining UC Berkeley, she held faculty positions at the University of Maryland College Park and The George Washington University in DC.

Currently, she directs the research and educational activities of the Membrane Innovation Lab, studying physicochemical and biological processes with emphases on advanced membrane processes and nanotechnology to address some of the most challenging issues in sustainable water supply and civil infrastructure, renewable energy production, and public health protection. Dr. Mi’s recent achievements include an NSF CAREER Award and Journal of Membrane Science Most Cited Author Award.

Read Baoxia’s Emerging Investigators article ‘silica-crosslinked graphene oxide membrane and its unique capability in removing neutral organic molecules from water‘.

– How has your research evolved from your first to your most recent article?
My first research article was on membrane integrity monitoring method published in the early stage of my PhD study at Illinois.  My current paper is on a novel graphene oxide membrane that demonstrates very interesting separation capabilities. So, over the years, the focus of my research has definitely shifted among different aspects of membrane technology, from membrane characterization to new materials and processes.  But overall, I am fascinated by novel technologies that can help us address global water challenges.

– What aspect of your work are you most excited about at the moment?
I am most excited about exploring new materials and technologies with the ultimate goal of discovering their potential in promoting water and environmental sustainability. New things do not always work, but there is a lot of fun in the learning process, and the excitement that we get when it does work is enormous.

– What makes silica-crosslinked graphene oxide membranes unique?
The uniqueness of silica-crosslinked graphene oxide membrane mainly comes from its 2D carbon-walled channels, which presents a membrane structure that is distinctly different from traditional porous membranes.  We believe such unique structure and associated interface phenomena eventually lead to the unexpected (in a good way) membrane behavior in removing neutral organic molecules.

– What is the most useful application for these membranes?
With its enhanced removal of organic compounds, this membrane can be potentially used for wastewater reuse, as wastewater often contains harmful organic contaminants, such as pharmaceuticals and personal care products, and endocrine disrupting compounds.

– What do you find most challenging about your research?
I felt that the most challenging part about my research is to bridge the gap between scientific discoveries in lab-scaled research and real-life applications of the technologies we are working on.

– In which upcoming conferences or events may our readers meet you?
My next trip is to the Gordon Research Conference on Membranes: Materials and Processes that will take place at Colby-Sawyer College in New London, NH next month.  At the meeting, I will give a talk on the promises of graphene oxide membranes in water purification. I am also co-organizing a session on membrane processes for water-energy sustainability at the ACS meeting next Spring in San Francisco.

Christina Remucal is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison where she focuses on aquatic chemistry. She is also affiliated with several interdisciplinary programs, including Environmental Chemistry and Technology, Freshwater and Marine Science, and Molecular and Environmental Toxicology. Dr. Remucal holds a BS (2003) in Environmental Engineering and Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an MS (2004) and PhD (2009) in Civil and Environmental Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley. She completed her postdoctoral research in the Institute of Biogeochemistry and Pollutant Dynamics at the Swiss

Read Christy’s Emerging Investigators article ‘the efficacy of chlorine photolysis as an advanced oxidation process for drinking water treatment.’

– How has your research evolved from your first to your most recent article?
My first paper came out of my undergraduate research on solar water disinfection. I then studied the production of reactive oxidants by zero-valent iron nanoparticles as a graduate student and returned to photochemistry as a post-doc. My current research focuses on the formation and fate of reactive oxidants that are capable of degrading contaminants in both natural systems and in engineered systems (as discussed in this article). While I’ve worked in different systems, my research has always aimed at developing ways to clean water.

– What aspect of your work are you most excited about at the moment?
My group is doing a lot of work characterizing the composition and reactivity of dissolved organic matter (DOM). DOM is present in all waters and is important for drinking water because it leads to the formation of disinfection by-products. It also plays a role in the indirect photodegradation of many contaminants in sunlit natural waters. I am excited about DOM because it is a really challenging problem, but also is very important for water quality.

– What do you see as the biggest challenge in drinking water?
Challenges in drinking water are related to both the quantity and quality of water resources. We only have a limited amount of available freshwater, but the stress on this resource is increasing due to a growing population. As a result, we are turning to lower quality water sources to meet our needs. We are also increasingly aware of the presence of emerging contaminants in our water, including pharmaceuticals and personal care products. While some of the solutions to these issues are technological, we also need to work on the social  and political aspects to meet our growing demand for water.

– You identified several gaps in knowledge of the chemistry of chlorine photolysis, what do you think is the biggest priority for future research?
A better understanding of the transformation of dissolved organic matter and the formation of disinfection by-products (DBPs) during chlorine photolysis is clearly needed. The data on this topic is limited and there is no consensus in the current literature about whether the treatment approach increases or decreases DBPs. Chlorine photolysis is a promising drinking water treatment approach to improve inactivation of pathogens and remove organic contaminants, but we need to know more about DBP formation in order to safely apply it.

– In which upcoming conferences or events may our readers meet you?
I am attending the Gordon Research Conference on Environmental Sciences: Water this summer, and will be at the spring ACS meeting in San Francisco in 2017 – How do you spend your spare time? Nearly all of my free time is spent with my family, including my daughter (5 years) and son (2 years). They are a lot of fun, and I really enjoy watching them learn about the world around them. Outside of that, I enjoy skiing, playing ultimate frisbee, and cooking.

– Which profession would you choose if you were not a scientist?
I have always loved science, even as a middle school student working on my first science fair project. If I had not gone into science, I would have pursued a career in medicine

– Can you share one piece of career-related advice or wisdom with other early career scientists?
Work on something you are really excited about. Research has its ups and downs, and being passionate about what you do helps you stay motivated and get through challenges.