MEL Seminar Series

Savanna Smith is currently a PhD researcher at North Carolina State University. Her research project is titled "Development of an anaerobic digestion minimal microbial community and community resistance and resilience in response to perturbations". The main goal of Savanna’s project is to better understand the community of microbes that convert leftover wastewater solids to energy so that we can more efficiently treat our wastewater. 

The research of Ilse Smets is focused on monitoring, optimization and control of biologicalwastewater treatment systems (i.e., classic activated sludge systems as well asmembrane bioreactors). While previous research predominantly concentrated onaerobic reactor processes, the current interest extends to anaerobic processesas well. Ongoing research focuses on developing monitoring tools that reflect theactivated sludge activity well without being too complex. Examples are (i)cofactor F420 and F430 analysis to quantify themethanogenic activity in anaerobic digestion processes, (ii)high-throughput quantification of hydrolysis activity and (iii) in depthmicroscopic analysis of the activated sludge’s morphology. The latter forms thefoundation on the research of the bioflocculation dynamics of activated sludgeinto flocs and granules. The recenttransition to a bottom-up approach using pure and co-cultures is deemed imperative to really uncover thefundamentals of floc or granule formation. 

Dr Martin Sharkey is a senior post-doctoral researcher at the University of Galway, holding an honours degree in Applied Physics and a PhD in Environmental Sciences. He has nearly ten years of experience investigating the presence of emerging hazardous chemicals in the Irish environment and their subsequent impact on waste management and recycling systems. He has worked on several EPA-funded projects, advised on projects for the UK Environment Agency, and was a plenary speaker at a European Chemicals Agency roundtable on the future of additive flame-retardant policy in the EU. He currently co-leads the TERRAChem project, investigating the presence of emerging pollutants and emerging chemicals of concern in the Irish Environment.

Dr Andrew Lee is a Senior Research Fellow in Microbiology at Queens University Belfast with the QUB Wastewater based Epidemiology Group. 

Associate professor of Chemical Engineering at the University of Santiago de Compostela (Spain). Chemical engineer (USC, 2001) and PhD in Chemical and Environmental Engineering (USC, 2005). She got a contract for Young Researchers at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso (Chile) from March 2006 till April 2007, and in May 2007, she joined the Laboratory of Microbial Ecology and Technology of Ghent University (Belgium) as postdoctoral researcher till August 2009. In September 2009, she joined the Department of Chemical Engineering at USC as postdoctoral researcher under Isidro Parga Pondal fellowship. Her current research interests include: target volatile fatty acid production by mixed culture anaerobic fermentation and biotransformation mechanisms of organic micropollutants during biological wastewater and sludge treatment processes.

Dr Ciara Keating is an Assistant Professor in Environmental Engineering within the Department of Engineering at Durham University. Her ambition is to develop more informed means to manipulate mixed microbial communities in biotechnology and agriculture. She is particularly interested in developing novel tools to advance our understanding of microbial interactions. Dr Keating is currently accepting PhD students and will consider undergraduates for studentship schemes (e.g. Microbiology Society). Her ambitions at Durham University are to use this expertise to develop more informed means to manipulate mixed microbial communities in biotechnology and agriculture. She is particularly interested in developing novel tools to advance our understanding of microbial interactions.

Dr. Ijaz is a reader in computational sciences at the University of Glasgow where he heads the Environmental 'Omics lab. Umer is one of our favorite collaborators and joined us for a talk titled, "Understanding microbial communities through in situ 'omics data synthesis". Thanks, Umer!

Dr Paul Smith is currently a Post Doctoral resarcher at Teagasc and joined us for a compelling talk titled, "Understanding the drivers of rumen ecology". Pauls work on the rumen microbiome is both cutting edge and timely! Wishing you the best, Paul! 

Javier Ramiro-Garcia is a Marie-Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship recipient at Spainish National Research Council in SevilleJavier joined us for an insightful talk into his current research using RNA-seq to unravel the complex interactions in anaerobic microbiomes. Good luck with it, Javi! 

Associate professor of Chemical Engineering at the University of Santiago de Compostela (Spain) since 2007. PhD. in Chemical Sciences from the USC in 1998 focused on the nitrogen removal from industrial effluents. Postdoctoral researcher at the TU Delft (The Netherlands) in 2000-2001, where she specialized in aerobic granular reactors to remove organic matter (COD) and nitrogen from industrial wastewater and on the application of autotrophic denitrification (anammox, denitrification with sulphur compounds) to effluents with low COD content. Then in 2005, she began applying the molecular biology techniques (FISH and DGGE) for the identification of bacterial populations in bioreactors. In 2011, she began the research line of biopolymers (polyhydroxyalkanoates) production from liquid wastes using mixed cultures.

Dr David Kelleghan joined us for a talk titled "Ammonia - Effects of an Agricultural Pollutant in Ireland". Dr David Kelleghan is an occasional lecturer and researcher within the School of Biosystems and Food Engineering in University College Dublin. He is an Irish section committee member of the Chartered Institute for Ecology and Environmental Management, and his PhD was ranked in the top 10 projects for research impact in UCD in 2019. His work focuses on monitoring and modelling environmental impacts of atmospheric ammonia from agriculture. As a Fulbright TechImpact Scholar, Dr Kelleghan will visit Iowa State University to further develop ammonia sensors used there. The primary goal of his scholarship will be to enhance low cost ammonia sensors suitable for deployment in both Ireland and Europe. Improving both the ease of use, and accessibility to such low-cost sensors will enhance the level of monitoring conducted across Europe. This will subsequently improve both the accuracy of atmospheric dispersion modelling and environmental assessments.