Understanding the mechanistic fate of viruses and biomolecules in the natural and engineered environment is important for ensuring safe water, food, and air. We use a number of microbiological and chemical analyses to study how biomolecules behave in a range of environmental conditions and scale our findings up to real world solutions.

For example, the surveillance of viruses in the wastewater environment is a powerful tool for tracking diseases caused by viruses (i.e. COVID-19, polio, influenza, RSV, etc.) and implementing appropriate public health interventions in real time. In order to correlate the viruses we measure in wastewater with the number of cases in a community, we research how viruses behave mechanistically in the wastewater environment. We have reported that virus capsids protect nucleic acids from degradation and that model enveloped viruses partition to wastewater solids. An improved understanding of what mechanisms drive viral decay and partitioning can help inform how to measure viruses in wastewater during outbreaks and interpret the results for public health action.

We study viral inactivation through water treatment processes. Disinfection processes are commonly used to inactivate viruses but we lack mechanistic models capable of predicting virus persistence through disinfection. We use a number of human virus surrogates to probe which reactions in the virus particle ultimately lead to inactivation. With our mechanistic data, along with data in the literature, we aim to build models capable of predicting how viruses behave under a range of conditions and better characterize virus removal in under-credited treatment processes.