Viruses are difficult to remove from water with physical purification processes due to their small size and surface charge. As a result, waterborne virus removal relies heavily on disinfection processes. The number and diversity of human viruses with published, high-quality disinfection kinetics is extremely limited due to the fact that most are non-culturable or difficult to culture.

Surrogate viruses are commonly used to shed light on the fate of human viruses in the environment and through water treatment; however, we lack a consistent framework for selecting effective surrogates. Meanwhile, the environmental virology field has gained an increasing understanding of the mechanisms that drive virus inactivation through disinfection processes. The Wigginton group is harnessing the collective understanding of virus structure, biology, and disinfection mechanisms to develop predictive frameworks that accurately estimate the inactivation kinetics of nonculturable and difficult-to-culture viruses. 

We have developed predictive models for virus inactivation with UV254 (Rockey 2021) and are now taking a similar approach for other disinfectants, including free chlorine and chlorine dioxide disinfectants. Specifically, we are applying concepts from environmental engineering, chemistry, virology, and data science to undertake three major research objectives, namely

1. expand the virus disinfection kinetics dataset in the literature to capture a broader and systematic range of virus physico-chemical and biological characteristics and thus better represent the diversity of human viruses in the environment;

2. develop computational models that predict virus inactivation kinetics based on virus particle chemistry, structure, and biology, and

3. use the vastly broadened disinfection kinetics dataset and predictive models. 

The major outputs of this research are tools to accurately characterize the inactivation of nonculturable and difficult-to-culture viruses through disinfection. This will help propel the field into a new era of disinfection design and implementation.