Our People - Environmental Biotechnology

Research Interests:

• Pathogen detection, disinfection and sterilization using UV light

• Photochemistry, photocatalytic applications to water and air treatment

• Environmental engineering

• Biotechnology, biofiltration

• Metal nanoparticle synthesis and applications

• Process modelling and simulation

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Research Interests:

• Characterization And Modelling Of The Behaviour Of Construction Materials
• Smart Pavement Materials And Structures
• Mechanistic Pavement Design Methods
• Optimization Of The Use Of Recycled Materials In Sustainable Infrastructure System
• Sustainable Development
• Life Cycle Analysis

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Research Interests:

• Bacterial molecular genetics

• Functional genomics, metagenomics, genome engineering

• Metabolic functions

• Synthetic biology, bioplastics and bioproducts

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[Biology News] December 21, 2016 "Waterloo biologist part of a research collaboration creating new genetic toolbox"

[Royal Canadian Institute Lecture] November 8, 2015 "Genome Engineering. Should we do it? (Can we afford not to?)"

[YouTube Lecture] September 30, 2014 "Mining microbial metagenomes"

[YouTube Lecture] September 19, 2013 "Mining metagenomes for bioplastics and other useful bioproducts"

[CBB researcher story] November 29, 2012 "Breaking Ground in Open Resource Metagenomics"

Research Interests:

• Effects of toxic chemicals, including metals and oilsands process water, on aquatic organisms, principally fish.
• Biotic modifying factors of toxicity.
• Development of methods for environmental effects monitoring.
• Physiologically based pharmacokinetic modelling of contaminant levels in fish.

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[Waterloo Stories] March 21, 2013 "A river runs through it: Keeping an eye on the Alberta oil sands"

Research Interests:

• Robustness of water supply systems, with a focus on treatment
• Facilitating application of newer treatment technologies (e.g. UV disinfection and membranes), including integration into existing facilities
• Identification and removal of trace chemical contaminants (pharmaceuticals & endocrine disrupters)
• Known and emerging pathogens, and their removal/inactivation by treatment processes
• Biodegradation

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NSERC Industrial Research Chair in Water Treatment [NSERC Profile]

[Waterloo Stories] March 14, 2013 "Protecting our drinking water for 20 years"

Research Interests:

• Microbial diversity and function at contaminated sites (primarily municipal landfills)
• DNA, RNA, and protein (meta-omics) sequences
• Environment remediation
• Impacts of human activities on the environment

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Canada Research Chair in Environmental Microbiology [Canada Research Chair Profile]

[YouTube] October 23, 2015 "Piecing life together - microbial diversity and function through meta-omic analyses"

[Waterloo Stories] April 12, 2016 "New tree of life may hold clues to cleaning up pollution"

Research Interests:

• Design/discovery of potential therapeutics to target various diseases
• Understanding the structure and pharmacology of membrane proteins
• Development of in silico methods/tools for sequence, structure and functional analysis
• Inferring the structure-function evolution of proteins
• Protein engineering for biotechnology and pharmaceutical applications

[American Chemical Society] January 23, 2012 "Exploring Inhibitor Release Pathways in Histone Deacetylases Using Random Acceleration Molecular Dynamics Simulations"

[Wiley Online Library] July 27, 2013 "Ligand release mechanisms and channels in histone deacetylases"

[Royal Society of Chemistry] December 19, 2013 "A steered molecular dynamics mediated hit discovery for histone deacetylases"

[Nature Methods] May 8, 2017 "ModelFinder: fast model selection for accurate phylogenetic estimates"

[Royal Society of Chemistry] October 24, 2017 "Reverse engineering: transaminase biocatalyst development using ancestral sequence reconstruction"

Research Interests:

• Production of bio-energy (electricity, H2, and CH4) and bio-chemicals from biomass

• Thermodynamic/kinetic analyses on microbial metabolisms in engineered and natural systems

• Microbial ecology in engineered biological systems

• Environmental biotechnology

• Nutrients recovery from organic waste and wastewater

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[Waterloo Stories] March 18, 2014 "Giving people a simple way to test their drinking water"

[Waterloo Stories] May 10, 2013 "Can bacteria create green energy?"

Research Interests:

• Biochemical engineering
• Protein and biomimetic engineering
• Biosensor development
• Bioprocess monitoring and soft sensor development
• Protein thermodynamics stability and analysis
• Environmental bioremediation and green bioprocesses
• Biological water treatment and membrane-based processes
• Spectroscopic techniques combined with chemometric methods for process optimization and the development of on-line sensor technology

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Research Interests:

• Biophysics of lipids and lipid-protein interactions

• The role of structural changes and physical properties of lipid template in controlling biological processes and diseases

• Biomedical nanotechnology (lipid films, molecular mechanism of Alzheimer's disease)

• Drug development and delivery systems, antimicrobial peptides in lung disorders

• Fluorescence and atomic force microscopy

• Kelvin probe force microscopy and single molecule force spectroscopy

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[Global Impact] May 2018, studying Alzheimer's at a molecular level to find a cure

[YouTube Lecture] October 1, 2014 "Scanning probe microscopy in biomedical research"

Research Interests:

• Protein structure, functions, evolution (yeast, mammalian cell lines, plant-bacterial)

• Bioinformatics, systematics and protein evolution

• Protein structure and interaction modeling
• Protein expression pattern analysis
• Molecular genetics

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Research Interests:

• Membrane filtration process (microfiltration; ultrafiltration; nanofiltration; reverse osmosis)

• Food proteins, processes, sustainability (concentration; separation; fractionation, water and waste minimization)

• Protein recovery and purification

• Enzyme reaction engineering

• Health food product development and processing

• Thermal food processes (baking; drying; ultra-high temperature; pasteurization; sterilization)

• Diffusion transport in biomaterials and polymeric films

Research Interests:

• Flexible, wearable energy storage and sensing technologies
• Graphene production and post-processing techniques
• Directed assembly of 2D nanomaterials at the air-water interface
• Bottom-up assembly approaches for energy storage, sensing and electrocatalysis
• Supercapacitors
• Next generation batteries
• Electrochemical sensors
• ​Thin films and membranes
• Nano-materials

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Office of Research - Technology Transfer & Commercialization:

• Film Forming Process

Research Interests:

• Enhanced drug delivery systems, gene therapy

• Associative polymers for environmentally friendly coatings

• Sustainable nanomaterials (cellulose nanocrystals)

• Atom Transfer Radical Polymerization (ATRP) and stimuli responsive polymeric systems

• Polymer-surfactant interactions

• Magnetic nanoparticles for novel separation processes

University Research Chair

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Research interests:

• Environmental biology, industrial biotechnology, and therapeutics
• Production of sustainable chemicals
• Novel bioprocesses for applications in bioresource engineering and biorefining
• Microalgae, metabolic engineering, and ionic liquid based separations in biological systems

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Research Interests:

• Biopharmaceuticals (therapeutics, treatment of autoimmune diseases, prevent rejection of organ transplants)

• Industrial biomanufacturing and biotechnology (fermentation, food ingredients, enzymes, biofuels)

• Environmental management (bioremediation of carcinogenic environmental pollutants, filtration, chromatography)

The Royal Society of Canada Fellow

[YouTube Lecture] September 29, 2014 "Biofuels and Waste Treatment"

[YouTube Lecture] September 19, 2013 "Industrial Biotechnology: Current developments and trends"

[UW Eng-e-news] August 14, 2013 "Engineering Life-enhancing research"

[Waterloo Stories] May 3, 2013 "Can bacteria help create a cheaper fuel for our cars?"

[CBB researcher story] December 6, 2012 "Bringing Bioengineering and Biotechnology to its Fullest Potential"