WW team Spring 2024
Wastewater Surveillance
Current wastewater research and surveillance is funded by an NSERC Alliance grant in partnership with the Ministry of Environment Conservation and Parks (MECP) as well as CBRF as part of the INSPIRE network. This work focuses on the use and optimization of RNA shotgun metagenomics sequencing and analysis to discover novel viruses in wastewater, as well as assay development/optimization for other pathogen targets such as Measles, Flu/RSV, ToBRFV, enteric viruses and STBBIs. Our partnerships with York Region and Region of Waterloo make this possible and we are thankful for their ongoing support!
Previously funded by MECP as part of the Ontario Wastewater Surveillance Initiative and by Public Health Agency of Canada for surveillance of Pearson International Airport wastewater for SARS-CoV-2 lineage frequencies.
Current lab members working on this project include Shahrzad Zahedifar, Delaney Nash, Alyssa Overton, Jenn Knapp, Chaeyun Kang and Shiv Naik
INSPIRE project
Charles lab is part of the Integrated Network for the Surveillance of Pathogens (INSPIRE) network. Our role in this network is to develop a general sequencing assay that could be used to detect emerging public health threats for future pandemic preparedness.
Led by University of Windsor, the INSPIRE project is funded by the Canadian Biomedical Research Fund (CBRF) and is part of the Canadian Hub for Health Intelligence and Innovation in Infectious Diseases (HI3). We are please to be working with many academic and private partners in this large project. You can read more about the project goals and who is involved at the INSPIRE Net website.
