Staff profile

Effective environmental engineering requires the integrated application of technical, social, and medical sciences to solve complex problems of our day. This especially applies to environmental issues that straddle human and environmental health, such as addressing the Covid-19 pandemic or mitigating the global spread of antibiotic resistance. Our work combines methods from engineering, microbiology, ecology, mathematics, biochemistry, and molecular biology to solve problems in environmental engineering in a holistic manner. Research topics include biological waste treatment, ecotoxicology, bioremediation, and the environmental fate and impacts of trace and genetic contaminants, recently including the use of wastewater markers to address the global pandemic. Current research projects include: 1) the transmission, fate and impact of antibiotic resistance bacteria and genes in the environment resulting from human activity; 2) wastewater-based epidemiology as an approach to health protection; 3) improving water and environmental quality in the emerging and developing world using integrated technical and social science approaches; 4) energy minimization in water, wastewater and solid waste management systems; and 5) the microbiology and ecology of greenhouse gas production and suppression, especially in Polar regions.

Research Interests

• Pubic policy focused research, especially related to human health protection
• Antimicrobial resistance and other health issues: Drivers, environmental exposures and mitigation
• Links between environmental quality and public health in the developing world
• Low-energy water and wastewater treatment technologies
• Microbial genetics and environmental biotechnology
• Polar microbiology and genetics

Current Work

• Wastewater-based epidemiology - SARS-CoV-2, Covid-19, and other infectious disease
• Ecology and genetics of antibiotic genes and bacteria in wastewater treatment processes
• Antibiotic resistance and infectious disease fate and modelling in the emerging and developing world
• Integrated technical and social solutions for protecting health and the environment
• Microbial and functional biogeography of High Arctic ecosystems

Journal Article

• Liu, Z.-L., Wang, Y.-F., Zhu, D., Quintela-Baluja, M., Graham, D. W., Zhu, Y.-G., & Qiao, M. (2024). Increased Transmission of Antibiotic Resistance Occurs in a Soil Food Chain under Pesticide Stress. Environmental Science and Technology, 58(50), 21989-22001. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.est.4c07822
• Hirst, R. W., Giesen, M. J., Peppa, M.-V., Jobling, K., Jadhav, D., Ahammad, S. Z., Namdeo, A., & Graham, D. W. (2024). Modeling of Air Quality near Indian Informal Settlements Where Limited Local Monitoring Data Exist. Atmosphere, 15(9), Article 1072. https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos15091072