BIOS Seminar: “Flushed with Insights: exploring wastewater and environmental microbial communities for ecology and public health” by Rachel Poretsky
September 10, 2024
4:00 PM - 5:00 PM
Location
4289 SELE
Calendar
Download iCal FilePlease join us at 4pm on Tuesday, September 10th in SELE 4289 for a BIOS Seminar featuring "Flushed with Insights: exploring wastewater and environmental microbial communities for ecology and public health" by Dr. Rachel Poretsky
Abstract: This talk will focus on how wastewater microbial communities shape our environment, are influenced by changing conditions, and can provide information about community health. I will begin by highlighting our current work in wastewater surveillance for public health in which we have established a wastewater-based epidemiology monitoring network to track pathogens such as SARS-CoV-2, influenza, and RSV by measuring the amount of viral RNA in wastewater. The initiative is a collaboration between the Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH), the Chicago Department of Public Health (CDPH), the University of Illinois System’s Discovery Partners Institute (DPI), the University of Illinois Chicago, Northwestern University, and Argonne National Laboratory to deliver actionable information to public health decision makers by identifying trends in pathogen infection levels and genomic context. We collect samples from over 100 locations, providing a reliable, non-invasive, and cost-effective way to measure community health, including in areas where clinical testing may be underutilized or unavailable, for 9 million Illinoisians. I will present related work with Rush University on a CDC-funded project examining antimicrobial resistance at long-term acute care hospitals and with collaborators on real-time air sensing. I will then present broader research about urban and urban-influenced aquatic environments and their relationship to wastewater discharge in terms of microbial community composition, degradation of emerging contaminants, and antimicrobial resistance. Finally, I will provide a broader context for this research and describe other efforts in the Poretsky lab to characterize microbial communities and functions.
Date posted
Sep 4, 2024
Date updated
Sep 4, 2024